Full text of the speech: Dr. Patrick Moore: Should We Celebrate Carbon Dioxide?

2015 Annual GWPF Lecture

Institute of Mechanical Engineers, London 14 October 2015

My Lords and Ladies, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Thank you for the opportunity to set out my views on climate change. As I have stated publicly on many occasions, there is no definitive scientific proof, through real-world observation, that carbon dioxide is responsible for any of the slight warming of the global climate that has occurred during the past 300 years, since the peak of the Little Ice Age. If there were such a proof through testing and replication it would have been written down for all to see.

The contention that human emissions are now the dominant influence on climate is simply a hypothesis, rather than a universally accepted scientific theory. It is therefore correct, indeed verging on compulsory in the scientific tradition, to be skeptical of those who express certainty that “the science is settled” and “the debate is over”.

But there is certainty beyond any doubt that CO2 is the building block for all life on Earth and that without its presence in the global atmosphere at a sufficient concentration this would be a dead planet. Yet today our children and our publics are taught that CO2 is a toxic pollutant that will destroy life and bring civilization to its knees. Tonight I hope to turn this dangerous human-caused propaganda on its head. Tonight I will demonstrate that human emissions of CO2 have already saved life on our planet from a very untimely end. That in the absence of our emitting some of the carbon back into the atmosphere from whence it came in the first place, most or perhaps all life on Earth would begin to die less than two million years from today.

But first a bit of background.

I was born and raised in the tiny floating village of Winter Harbour on the northwest tip of Vancouver Island, in the rainforest by the Pacific. There was no road to my village so for eight years myself and a few other children were taken by boat each day to a one-room schoolhouse in the nearby fishing village. I didn’t realize how lucky I was playing on the tide flats by the salmon-spawning streams in the rainforest, until I was sent off to boarding school in Vancouver where I excelled in science. I did my undergraduate studies at the University of British Columbia, gravitating to the life sciences – biology, biochemistry, genetics, and forestry – the environment and the industry my family has been in for more than 100 years. Then, before the word was known to the general public, I discovered the science of ecology, the science of how all living things are inter-related, and how we are related to them.

At the height of the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the threat of all-out nuclear war and the newly emerging consciousness of the environment I was transformed into a radical environmental activist. While doing my PhD in ecology in 1971 I joined a group of activists who had begun to meet in the basement of the Unitarian Church, to plan a protest voyage against US hydrogen bomb testing in Alaska.

We proved that a somewhat rag-tag looking group of activists could sail an old fishing boat across the north Pacific ocean and help change the course of history. We created a focal point for the media to report on public opposition to the tests.

When that H-bomb exploded in November 1971, it was the last hydrogen bomb the United States ever detonated. Even though there were four more tests planned in the series, President Nixon canceled them due to the public opposition we had helped to create. That was the birth of Greenpeace.

Flushed with victory, on our way home from Alaska we were made brothers of the Namgis Nation in their Big House at Alert Bay near my northern Vancouver Island home. For Greenpeace this began the tradition of the Warriors of the Rainbow, after a Cree Indian legend that predicted the coming together of all races and creeds to save the Earth from destruction. We named our ship the Rainbow Warrior and I spent the next fifteen years in the top committee of Greenpeace, on the front lines of the environmental movement as we evolved from that church basement into the world’s largest environmental activist organization.

Next we took on French atmospheric nuclear testing in the South Pacific. They proved a bit more difficult than the US nuclear tests. It took years to eventually drive these tests underground at Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia. In 1985, under direct orders from President Mitterrand, French commandos bombed and sank the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour, killing our photographer. Those protests continued until long after I left Greenpeace. It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that nuclear testing finally ended in the South Pacific, and it most other parts of the world as well.

Going back to 1975, Greenpeace set out to save the whales from extinction at the hands of huge factory whaling fleets. We confronted the Soviet factory whaling fleet in the North Pacific, putting ourselves in front of their harpoons in our little rubber boats to protect the fleeing whales. This was broadcast on television news around the world, bringing the Save the Whales movement into everyone’s living rooms for the first time. After four years of voyages, in 1979 factory whaling was finally banned in the North Pacific, and by 1981 in all the world’s oceans.

In 1978 I sat on a baby seal off the East Coast of Canada to protect it from the hunter’s club. I was arrested and hauled off to jail, the seal was clubbed and skinned, but a photo of me being arrested while sitting on the baby seal appeared in more than 3000 newspapers around the world the next morning. We won the hearts and minds of millions of people who saw the baby seal slaughter as outdated, cruel, and unnecessary.

Why then did I leave Greenpeace after 15 years in the leadership? When Greenpeace began we had a strong humanitarian orientation, to save civilization from destruction by all-out nuclear war. Over the years the “peace” in Greenpeace was gradually lost and my organization, along with much of the environmental movement, drifted into a belief that humans are the enemies of the earth. I believe in a humanitarian environmentalism because we are part of nature, not separate from it. The first principle of ecology is that we are all part of the same ecosystem, as Barbara Ward put it, “One human family on spaceship Earth”, and to preach otherwise teaches that the world would be better off without us. As we shall see later in the presentation there is very good reason to see humans as essential to the survival of life on this planet.

In the mid 1980s I found myself the only director of Greenpeace International with a formal education in science. My fellow directors proposed a campaign to “ban chlorine worldwide”, naming it “The Devil’s Element”. I pointed out that chlorine is one of the elements in the Periodic Table, one of the building blocks of the Universe and the 11th most common element in the Earth’s crust. I argued the fact that chlorine is the most important element for public health and medicine. Adding chlorine to drinking water was the biggest advance in the history of public health and the majority of our synthetic medicines are based on chlorine chemistry. This fell on deaf ears, and for me this was the final straw. I had to leave.

When I left Greenpeace I vowed to develop an environmental policy that was based on science and logic rather than sensationalism, misinformation, anti-humanism and fear. In a classic example, a recent protest led by Greenpeace in the Philippines used the skull and crossbones to associate Golden Rice with death, when in fact Golden Rice has the potential to help save 2 million children from death due to vitamin A deficiency every year.

The Keeling curve of CO2 concentration in the Earth’s atmosphere since 1959 is the supposed smoking gun of catastrophic climate change. We presume CO2 was at 280 ppm at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, before human activity could have caused a significant impact. I accept that most of the rise from 280 to 400 ppm is caused by human CO2 emissions with the possibility that some of it is due to outgassing from warming of the oceans.

NASA tells us that “Carbon Dioxide Controls Earth’s Temperature” in child-like denial of the many other factors involved in climate change. This is reminiscent of NASA’s contention that there might be life on Mars. Decades after it was demonstrated that there was no life on Mars, NASA continues to use it as a hook to raise public funding for more expeditions to the Red Planet. The promulgation of fear of Climate Change now serves the same purpose. As Bob Dylan prophetically pointed out, “Money doesn’t talk, it swears”, even in one of the most admired science organizations in the world.

On the political front the leaders of the G7 plan to “end extreme poverty and hunger” by phasing out 85% of the world’s energy supply including 98% of the energy used to transport people and goods, including food. The Emperors of the world appear clothed in the photo taken at the close of the meeting but it was obviously Photo-shopped. They should be required to stand naked for making such a foolish statement.

The world’s top climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change, is hopelessly conflicted by its makeup and it mandate. The Panel is composed solely of the World Meteorological Organization, weather forecasters, and the United Nations Environment Program, environmentalists. Both these organizations are focused primarily on short-term timescales, days to maybe a century or two. But the most significant conflict is with the Panel’s mandate from the United Nations. They are required only to focus on “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the atmosphere, and which is in addition to natural climate variability.” So if the IPCC found that climate change was not being affected by human alteration of the atmosphere or that it is not “dangerous” there would be no need for them to exist. They are virtually mandated to find on the side of apocalypse.

Scientific certainty, political pandering, a hopelessly conflicted IPCC, and now the Pope, spiritual leader of the Catholic Church, in a bold move to reinforce the concept of original sin, says the Earth looks like “an immense pile of filth” and we must go back to pre-industrial bliss, or is that squalor?

And then there is the actual immense pile of filth fed to us more than three times daily by the green-media nexus, a seething cauldron of imminent doom, like we are already condemned to Damnation in Hell and there is little chance of Redemption. I fear for the end of the Enlightenment. I fear an intellectual Gulag with Greenpeace as my prison guards.

Let’s begin with our knowledge of the long-term history of the Earth’s temperature and of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere. Our best inference from various proxies back indicate that CO2 was higher for the first 4 billion years of Earth’s history than it has been since the Cambrian Period until today. I will focus on the past 540 million years since modern life forms evolved. It is glaringly obvious that temperature and CO2 are in an inverse correlation at least as often as they are in any semblance of correlation. Two clear examples of reverse correlation occurred 150 million years and 50 million years ago. At the end of the Jurassic temperature fell dramatically while CO2 spiked. During the Eocene Thermal Maximum, temperature was likely higher than any time in the past 550 million years while CO2 had been on a downward track for 100 million years. This evidence alone sufficient to warrant deep speculation of any claimed lock-step causal relationship between CO2 and temperature.

The Devonian Period beginning 400 million years ago marked the culmination of the invasion of life onto the land. Plants evolved to produce lignin, which in combination with cellulose, created wood which in turn for the first time allowed plants to grow tall, in competition with each other for sunlight. As vast forests spread across the land living biomass increased by orders of magnitude, pulling down carbon as CO2 from the atmosphere to make wood. Lignin is very difficult to break down and no decomposer species possessed the enzymes to digest it. Trees died atop one another until they were 100 metres or more in depth. This was the making of the great coal beds around the world as this huge store of sequestered carbon continued to build for 90 million years. Then, fortunately for the future of life, white rot fungi evolved to produce the enzymes that can digest lignin and coincident with that the coal-making era came to an end.

There was no guarantee that fungi or any other decomposer species would develop the complex of enzymes required to digest lignin. If they had not, CO2, which had already been drawn down for the first time in Earth’s history to levels similar to todays, would have continued to decline as trees continued to grow and die. That is until CO2 approached the threshold of 150 ppm below which plants begin first to starve, then stop growing altogether, and then die. Not just woody plants but all plants. This would bring about the extinction of most, if not all, terrestrial species, as animals, insects, and other invertebrates starved for lack of food. And that would be that. The human species would never have existed. This was only the first time that there was a distinct possibility that life would come close to extinguishing itself, due to a shortage of CO2, which is essential for life on Earth.

A well-documented record of global temperature over the past 65 million years shows that we have been in a major cooling period since the Eocene Thermal Maximum 50 million years ago. The Earth was an average 16C warmer then, with most of the increased warmth at the higher latitudes. The entire planet, including the Arctic and Antarctica were ice-free and the land there was covered in forest.

The ancestors of every species on Earth today survived through what may have been the warmest time in the history of life. It makes one wonder about dire predictions that even a 2C rise in temperature from pre-industrial times would cause mass extinctions and the destruction of civilization. Glaciers began to form in Antarctica 30 million years ago and in the northern hemisphere 3 million years ago. Today, even in this interglacial period of the Pleistocene Ice Age, we are experiencing one of the coldest climates in the Earth’s history.

Coming closer to the present we have learned from Antarctic ice cores that for the past 800,000 years there have been regular periods of major glaciation followed by interglacial periods in 100,000 year-cycles. These cycles coincide with the Milankovitch cycles that are tied to the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit and its axial tilt. It is highly plausible that these cycles are related to solar intensity and the seasonal distribution of solar heat on the Earth’s surface. There is a strong correlation between temperature and the level of atmospheric CO2 during these successive glaciations, indicating a possible cause-effect relationship between the two. CO2 lags temperature by an average of 800 years during the most recent 400,000-year period, indicating that temperature is the cause, as the cause never comes after the effect.

Looking at the past 50,000 years of temperature and CO2 we can see that changes in CO2 follow changes in temperature. This is as one could expect, as the Milankovitch cycles are far more likely to cause a change in temperature than a change in CO2. And a change in the temperature is far more likely to cause a change in CO2 due to outgassing of CO2 from the oceans during warmer times and an ingassing (absorption) of CO2 during colder periods. Yet climate alarmists persist in insisting that CO2 is causing the change in temperature, despite the illogical nature of that assertion.

It is sobering to consider the magnitude of climate change during the past 20,000 years, since the peak of the last major glaciation. At that time there were 3.3 kilometres of ice on top of what is today the city of Montreal, a city of more than 3 million people. 95% of Canada was covered in a sheet of ice. Even as far south as Chicago there was nearly a kilometre of ice. If the Milankovitch cycle continues to prevail, and there is little reason aside from our CO2 emissions to think otherwise, this will happen gradually again during the next 80,000 years. Will our CO2 emissions stave off another glaciation as James Lovelock has suggested? There doesn’t seem to be much hope of that so far, as despite 1/3 of all our CO2 emissions being released during the past 18 years the UK Met Office contends there has been no statistically significant warming during this century.

At the height of the last glaciation the sea level was about 120 metres lower than it is today. By 7,000 years ago all the low-altitude, mid-latitude glaciers had melted. There is no consensus about the variation in sea level since then although many scientists have concluded that the sea level was higher than today during the Holocene Thermal optimum from 9,000 to 5,000 years ago when the Sahara was green. The sea level may also have been higher than today during the Medieval Warm Period.

Hundred of islands near the Equator in Papua, Indonesia, have been undercut by the sea in a manner that gives credence to the hypothesis that there has been little net change in sea level in the past thousands of years. It takes a long time for so much erosion to occur from gentle wave action in a tropical sea.

Coming back to the relationship between temperature and CO2 in the modern era we can see that temperature has risen at a steady slow rate in Central England since 1700 while human CO2 emissions were not relevant until 1850 and then began an exponential rise after 1950. This is not indicative of a direct causal relationship between the two. After freezing over regularly during the Little Ice Age the River Thames froze for the last time in 1814, as the Earth moved into what might be called the Modern Warm Period.

The IPCC states it is “extremely likely” that human emissions have been the dominant cause of global warming “since the mid-20th century”, that is since 1950. They claim that “extremely” means 95% certain, even though the number 95 was simply plucked from the air like an act of magic. And “likely” is not a scientific word but rather indicative of a judgment, another word for an opinion.

There was a 30-year period of warming from 1910-1940, then a cooling from 1940 to 1970, just as CO2 emissions began to rise exponentially, and then a 30-year warming from 1970-2000 that was very similar in duration and temperature rise to the rise from 1910-1940. One may then ask “what caused the increase in temperature from 1910-1940 if it was not human emissions? And if it was natural factors how do we know that the same natural factors were not responsible for the rise between 1970-2000.” You don’t need to go back millions of years to find the logical fallacy in the IPCC’s certainty that we are the villains in the piece.

Water is by far the most important greenhouse gas, and is the only molecule that is present in the atmosphere in all three states, gas, liquid, and solid. As a gas, water vapour is a greenhouse gas, but as a liquid and solid it is not. As a liquid water forms clouds, which send solar radiation back into space during the day and hold heat in at night. There is no possibility that computer models can predict the net effect of atmospheric water in a higher CO2 atmosphere. Yet warmists postulate that higher CO2 will result in positive feedback from water, thus magnifying the effect of CO2 alone by 2-3 times. Other scientists believe that water may have a neutral or negative feedback on CO2. The observational evidence from the early years of this century tends to reinforce the latter hypothesis.

How many politicians or members of the media or the public are aware of this statement about climate change from the IPCC in 2007?

“we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled nonlinear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”

There is a graph showing that the climate models have grossly exaggerated the rate of warming that confirms the IPCC statement. The only trends the computer models seem able to predict accurately are ones that have already occurred.

Coming to the core of my presentation, CO2 is the currency of life and the most important building block for all life on Earth. All life is carbon-based, including our own. Surely the carbon cycle and its central role in the creation of life should be taught to our children rather than the demonization of CO2, that “carbon” is a “pollutant” that threatens the continuation of life. We know for a fact that CO2 is essential for life and that it must be at a certain level in the atmosphere for the survival of plants, which are the primary food for all the other species alive today. Should we not encourage our citizens, students, teachers, politicians, scientists, and other leaders to celebrate CO2 as the giver of life that it is?

It is a proven fact that plants, including trees and all our food crops, are capable of growing much faster at higher levels of CO2 than present in the atmosphere today. Even at the today’s concentration of 400 ppm plants are relatively starved for nutrition. The optimum level of CO2 for plant growth is about 5 times higher, 2000 ppm, yet the alarmists warn it is already too high. They must be challenged every day by every person who knows the truth in this matter. CO2 is the giver of life and we should celebrate CO2 rather than denigrate it as is the fashion today.

We are witnessing the “Greening of the Earth” as higher levels of CO2, due to human emissions from the use of fossil fuels, promote increased growth of plants around the world. This has been confirmed by scientists with CSIRO in Australia, in Germany, and in North America. Only half of the CO2 we are emitting from the use of fossil fuels is showing up in the atmosphere. The balance is going somewhere else and the best science says most of it is going into an increase in global plant biomass. And what could be wrong with that, as forests and agricultural crops become more productive?

All the CO2 in the atmosphere has been created by outgassing from the Earth’s core during massive volcanic eruptions. This was much more prevalent in the early history of the Earth when the core was hotter than it is today. During the past 150 million years there has not been enough addition of CO2 to the atmosphere to offset the gradual losses due to burial in sediments.

Let’s look at where all the carbon is in the world, and how it is moving around.

Today, at just over 400 ppm CO2 there are 850 billion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere. By comparison, when modern life-forms evolved over 500 million years ago there was nearly 15,000 billion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere, 17 times today’s level. Plants and soils combined contain more than 2,000 billion tons of carbon, more that twice as much as the entire global atmosphere. The oceans contain 38,000 billion tons of dissolved CO2, 45 times as much as in the atmosphere. Fossil fuels, which were made from plants that pulled CO2 from the atmosphere account for 5,000 – 10,000 billion tons of carbon, 6 – 12 times as much carbon as is in the atmosphere.

But the truly stunning number is the amount of carbon that has been sequestered from the atmosphere and turned into carbonaceous rocks. 100,000,000 billion tons, that’s one quadrillion tons of carbon, have been turned into stone by marine species that learned to make armour-plating for themselves by combining calcium and carbon into calcium carbonate. Limestone, chalk, and marble are all of life origin and amount to 99.9% of all the carbon ever present in the global atmosphere. The white cliffs of Dover are made of the calcium carbonate skeletons of coccolithophores, tiny marine phytoplankton.

The vast majority of the carbon dioxide that originated in the atmosphere has been sequestered and stored quite permanently in carbonaceous rocks where it cannot be used as food by plants.

Beginning 540 million years ago at the beginning of the Cambrian Period many marine species of invertebrates evolved the ability to control calcification and to build armour plating to protect their soft bodies. Shellfish such as clams and snails, corals, coccolithofores (phytoplankton) and foraminifera (zooplankton) began to combine carbon dioxide with calcium and thus to remove carbon from the life cycle as the shells sank into sediments; 100,000,000 billion tons of carbonaceous sediment. It is ironic that life itself, by devising a protective suit of armour, determined its own eventual demise by continuously removing CO2 from the atmosphere. This is carbon sequestration and storage writ large. These are the carbonaceous sediments that form the shale deposits from which we are fracking gas and oil today. And I add my support to those who say, “OK UK, get fracking”.

The past 150 million years has seen a steady drawing down of CO2 from the atmosphere. There are many components to this but what matters is the net effect, a removal on average of 37,000 tons of carbon from the atmosphere every year for 150 million years. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was reduced by about 90% during this period. This means that volcanic emissions of CO2 have been outweighed by the loss of carbon to calcium carbonate sediments on a multi-million year basis.

If this trend continues CO2 will inevitably fall to levels that threaten the survival of plants, which require a minimum of 150 ppm to survive. If plants die all the animals, insects, and other invertebrates that depend on plants for their survival will also die.

How long will it be at the present level of CO2 depletion until most or all of life on Earth is threatened with extinction by lack of CO2 in the atmosphere?

During this Pleistocene Ice Age, CO2 tends to reach a minimum level when the successive glaciations reach their peak. During the last glaciation, which peaked 18,000 years ago, CO2 bottomed out at 180 ppm, extremely likely the lowest level CO2 has been in the history of the Earth. This is only 30 ppm above the level that plants begin to die. Paleontological research has demonstrated that even at 180 ppm there was a severe restriction of growth as plants began to starve. With the onset of the warmer interglacial period CO2 rebounded to 280 ppm. But even today, with human emissions causing CO2 to reach 400 ppm plants are still restricted in their growth rate, which would be much higher if CO2 were at 1000-2000 ppm.

Here is the shocking news. If humans had not begun to unlock some of the carbon stored as fossil fuels, all of which had been in the atmosphere as CO2 before sequestration by plants and animals, life on Earth would have soon been starved of this essential nutrient and would begin to die. Given the present trends of glaciations and interglacial periods this would likely have occurred less than 2 million years from today, a blink in nature’s eye, 0.05% of the 3.5 billion-year history of life.

No other species could have accomplished the task of putting some of the carbon back into the atmosphere that was taken out and locked in the Earth’s crust by plants and animals over the millennia. This is why I honour James Lovelock in my lecture this evening. Jim was for many years of the belief that humans are the one-and-only rogue species on Gaia, destined to cause catastrophic global warming. I enjoy the Gaia hypothesis but I am not religious about it and for me this was too much like original sin. It was as if humans were the only evil species on the Earth.

But James Lovelock has seen the light and realized that humans may be part of Gaia’s plan, and he has good reason to do so. And I honour him because it takes courage to change your mind after investing so much of your reputation on the opposite opinion. Rather than seeing humans as the enemies of Gaia, Lovelock now sees that we may be working with Gaia to “stave of another ice age”, or major glaciation. This is much more plausible than the climate doom-and gloom scenario because our release of CO2 back into the atmosphere has definitely reversed the steady downward slide of this essential food for life, and hopefully may reduce the chance that the climate will slide into another period of major glaciation. We can be certain that higher levels of CO2 will result in increased plant growth and biomass. We really don’t know whether or not higher levels of CO2 will prevent or reduce the eventual slide into another major glaciation. Personally I am not hopeful for this because the long-term history just doesn’t support a strong correlation between CO2 and temperature.

It does boggle the mind in the face of our knowledge that the level of CO2 has been steadily falling that human CO2 emissions are not universally acclaimed as a miracle of salvation. From direct observation we already know that the extreme predictions of CO2’s impact on global temperature are highly unlikely given that about one-third of all our CO2 emissions have been discharged during the past 18 years and there has been no statistically significant warming. And even if there were some additional warming that would surely be preferable to the extermination of all or most species on the planet.

You heard it here. “Human emissions of carbon dioxide have saved life on Earth from inevitable starvation and extinction due to lack of CO2”. To use the analogy of the Atomic Clock, if the Earth were 24 hours old we were at 38 seconds to midnight when we reversed the trend towards the End Times. If that isn’t good news I don’t know what is. You don’t get to stave off Armageddon every day.

I issue a challenge to anyone to provide a compelling argument that counters my analysis of the historical record and the prediction of CO2 starvation based on the 150 million year trend. Ad hominem arguments about “deniers” need not apply. I submit that much of society has been collectively misled into believing that global CO2 and temperature are too high when the opposite is true for both. Does anyone deny that below 150 ppm CO2 that plants will die? Does anyone deny that the Earth has been in a 50 million-year cooling period and that this Pleistocene Ice Age is one of the coldest periods in the history of the planet?

If we assume human emissions have to date added some 200 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere, even if we ceased using fossil fuels today we have already bought another 5 million years for life on earth. But we will not stop using fossil fuels to power our civilization so it is likely that we can forestall plant starvation for lack of CO2 by at least 65 million years. Even when the fossil fuels have become scarce we have the quadrillion tons of carbon in carbonaceous rocks, which we can transform into lime and CO2 for the manufacture of cement. And we already know how to do that with solar energy or nuclear energy. This alone, regardless of fossil fuel consumption, will more than offset the loss of CO2 due to calcium carbonate burial in marine sediments. Without a doubt the human species has made it possible to prolong the survival of life on Earth for more than 100 million years. We are not the enemy of nature but its salvation.

As a postscript I would like to make a few comments about the other side of the alleged dangerous climate change coin, our energy policy, in particular the much maligned fossil fuels; coal, oil, and natural gas.

Depending how it’s tallied, fossil fuels account for between 85-88% of global energy consumption and more than 95% of energy for the transport of people and goods, including our food.

Earlier this year the leaders of the G7 countries agreed that fossil fuels should be phased out by 2100, a most bizarre development to say the least. Of course no intelligent person really believes this will happen but it is a testament to the power of the elites that have converged around the catastrophic human-caused climate change that so many alleged world leaders must participate in the charade. How might we convince them to celebrate CO2 rather than to denigrate it?

A lot of nasty things are said about fossil fuels even though they are largely responsible for our longevity, our prosperity, and our comfortable lifestyles.

Hydrocarbons, the energy components of fossil fuels, are 100% organic, as in organic chemistry. They were produced by solar energy in ancient seas and forests. When they are burned for energy the main products are water and CO2, the two most essential foods for life. And fossil fuels are by far the largest storage battery of direct solar energy on Earth. Nothing else comes close except nuclear fuel, which is also solar in the sense that it was produced in dying stars.

Today, Greenpeace protests Russian and American oil rigs with 3000 HP diesel-powered ships and uses 200 HP outboard motors to board the rigs and hang anti-oil plastic banners made with fossil fuels. Then they issue a media release telling us we must “end our addiction to oil”. I wouldn’t mind so much if Greenpeace rode bicycles to their sailing ships and rowed their little boats into the rigs to hang organic cotton banners. We didn’t have an H-bomb on board the boat that sailed on the first Greenpeace campaign against nuclear testing.

Some of the world’s oil comes from my native country in the Canadian oil sands of northern Alberta. I had never worked with fossil fuel interests until I became incensed with the lies being spread about my country’s oil production in the capitals of our allies around the world. I visited the oil sands operations to find out for myself what was happening there.

It is true it’s not a pretty sight when the land is stripped bare to get at the sand so the oil can be removed from it. Canada is actually cleaning up the biggest natural oil spill in history, and making a profit from it. The oil was brought to the surface when the Rocky Mountains were thrust up by the colliding Pacific Plate. When the sand is returned back to the land 99% of the so-called “toxic oil” has been removed from it.

Anti-oil activists say the oil-sands operations are destroying the boreal forest of Canada. Canada’s boreal forest accounts for 10% of all the world’s forests and the oil-sands area is like a pimple on an elephant by comparison. By law, every square inch of land disturbed by oil-sands extraction must be returned to native boreal forest. When will cities like London, Brussels, and New York that have laid waste to the natural environment be returned to their native ecosystems?

The art and science of ecological restoration, or reclamation as it is called in the mining industry, is a well-established practice. The land is re-contoured, the original soil is put back, and native species of plants and trees are established. It is possible, by creating depressions where the land was flat, to increase biodiversity by making ponds and lakes where wetland plants, insects, and waterfowl can become established in the reclaimed landscape.

The tailings ponds where the cleaned sand is returned look ugly for a few years but are eventually reclaimed into grasslands. The Fort McKay First Nation is under contract to manage a herd of bison on a reclaimed tailings pond. Every tailings pond will be reclaimed in a similar manner when operations have been completed.

As an ecologist and environmentalist for more than 45 years this is good enough for me. The land is disturbed for a blink of an eye in geological time and is then returned to a sustainable boreal forest ecosystem with cleaner sand. And as a bonus we get the fuel to power our weed-eaters, scooters, motorcycles, cars, trucks, buses, trains, and aircraft.

To conclude, carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is the stuff of life, the staff of life, the currency of life, indeed the backbone of life on Earth.

I am honoured to have been chosen to deliver your annual lecture.

Thank you for listening to me this evening.

I hope you have seen CO2 from a new perspective and will join with me to Celebrate CO2!

You seem to be an expert, so maybe you can tell me how much CO2 we SHOULD have.
1000 ppm?
10000 ppm?
1000000 ppm?
“We presume CO2 was at 280 ppm at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, before human activity could have caused a significant impact. I accept that most of the rise from 280 to 400 ppm is caused by human CO2 emissions with the possibility that some of it is due to outgassing from warming of the oceans.”
Considering that most “developing” countries industrialized just in recent years with BILLIONS of people switching from foot, animal and bicycle transportation to cars and from the simple life to heated and air conditioned homes — what is the projection?
Mr. Moore is an industry shill. He conveniently failed to mention CO2 ppm projections, the effect of the increase in human population and the industrialization of developing countries.
How about celebrating CO2 in the closed garage with the engine running?

Christine Baker says:You seem to be an expert
Sounds like Christine wants to learn from the numerous experts here.
The “projection” Ms Baker refers to will not result in even a doubling of CO2. There isn’t enough easily extractable fossil fuel to cause that; the biosphere will sequester a large part of any new CO2 emitted, and doubling CO2 from current 400 ppm would be entirely beneficial, with no downside. Ms Baker would not even be aware of it, if someone didn’t tell her it had happened. Only plants would know, and they would be very happy about it.
The real question is: why does Baker want to deny others what she already has? I suspect Ms Baker is not using her feet or a bicycle for her own transportation needs. Her hypocrisy is not pretty.
Next, “an industry shill” is nothing but an ad hominem logical fallacy, used when the critic cannot think of a rational argument.
Finally, regarding Baker’s last suggestion, like all the eco-hypocrites who want to drastically reduce the planet’s population, I suggest to Ms Baker that she should lead by example.

I actually DO try to lead by example. However, I’m not capable of changing how international corporations and corporate owned governments exploit and literally kill off people, animals and our environment not just for profits, but for POWER.
I did NOT at all suggest population reduction. And that’s why I should never post online, so few people have the ability to comprehend what’s REALLY going on.
Moore has long been exposed as a shill for the bio tech, oil and nuclear industry.
If I had MY way, we’d have NO free trade (keeping countless jobs). America wouldn’t ship steel, lumber and other resources to China for production of toxic products shipped back to the US. We would ban ALL GMO crops until they have been LONG TERM tested by INDEPENDENT scientists. We would ban most pesticides, herbicides, insecticides and fungicides. We would ban ALL CAFOs (reducing meat consumption dramatically and eliminating the need for GMO corn and soy). We would ban monoculture. We would eliminate subsidies to corporate farms and instead support family farmers. We would shut down all nuclear and coal power plants. We would ban fracking and REIMBURSE the people who lost their wells and otherwise suffered damages. We would ban fluoride in drinking water. We would ban the countless vaccines and flu shots unnecessarily forced on children and even babies, subjecting them to possibly deadly “side effects”. We would abolish the Federal Reserve. And of course, we would end all wars and covert actions over resources. We would end the corporate funding of elections. We would break up monopolies and support LOCAL businesses.
We would support farmers who provide LOCALLY grown organic NUTRIENT DENSE food and fund related research. We would invest in clean energy and thoroughly TESTED technology.
Well that’s just a short list.
It is shocking that nobody understands or cares how we are destroying our environment, the middle class and most of all, our health and future. American quality of life is decreasing dramatically. Autism, allergies and chronic incurable diseases are caused by our ENVIRONMENT.
Some European leaders have at least a bit of a clue and several countries just banned GMOs. However, it’s a world economy and what happened to Greece IS happening to Americans and all Europeans at a slower rate. The 1% get richer and the working people get to work harder and longer for less pay.
For what it’s worth, unlike Dr. Moore I’m NOT convinced that “global warming” has anything to do with human CO2 emissions. MANY factors can raise average earth temperatures and it’s not clear to me why other planets are also warming. Not to mention the fact that much of the climate data has been manipulated to conform to the expectations of the people (corporations) in charge.
Al Gore is getting STINKING RICH while “saving the planet”, yet he ignores the fact that cows are MAJOR methane sources (watch Cowspiracy on Netflix). The truth is just too inconvenient.
Global warming, just like war, is a racket. Carbon trades and derivatives are just one more way for the rich to get richer.
I am shocked by the many ridiculous responses to my initial post and can only hope that intelligent life is just congregating elsewhere.
Go ahead and celebrate CO2 day. Finance a hummer, worship your stuff and ignore our future.
I don’t have time to respond further, planting greens today.
I did NOT at all suggest population reduction. And that’s why I should never post online, so few people have the ability to comprehend what’s REALLY going on.
Moore has long been exposed as a shill for the bio tech, oil and nuclear industry.
If I had MY way, we’d have NO free trade (keeping countless jobs). America wouldn’t ship steel, lumber and other resources to China for production of toxic products shipped back to the US. We would ban ALL GMO crops until they have been LONG TERM tested by INDEPENDENT scientists. We would ban most pesticides, herbicides, insecticides and fungicides. We would ban ALL CAFOs (reducing meat consumption dramatically and eliminating the need for GMO corn and soy). We would ban monoculture. We would eliminate subsidies to corporate farms and instead support family farmers. We would shut down all nuclear and coal power plants. We would ban fracking and REIMBURSE the people who lost their wells and otherwise suffered damages. We would ban fluoride in drinking water. We would ban the countless vaccines and flu shots unnecessarily forced on children and even babies, subjecting them to possibly deadly “side effects”. We would abolish the Federal Reserve. And of course, we would end all wars and covert actions over resources. We would end the corporate funding of elections. We would break up monopolies and support LOCAL businesses.
We would support farmers who provide LOCALLY grown organic NUTRIENT DENSE food and fund related research. We would invest in clean energy and thoroughly TESTED technology.
Well that’s just a short list.
It is shocking that nobody understands or cares how we are destroying our environment, the middle class and most of all, our health and future. American quality of life is decreasing dramatically. Alzheimers, Autism, allergies and chronic incurable diseases are caused primarily by our ENVIRONMENT — air, water, food and so-called medicine.
Some European leaders have at least a bit of a clue and several countries just banned GMOs. However, it’s a world economy and what happened to Greece IS happening to Americans and all Europeans at a slower rate. The 1% get richer and the working people get to work harder and longer for less pay.
For what it’s worth, unlike Dr. Moore I’m NOT convinced that “global warming” has anything to do with human CO2 emissions. MANY factors can raise average earth temperatures and it’s not clear to me why other planets are also warming. Not to mention the fact that much of the climate data has been manipulated to conform to the expectations of the people (corporations / governments) in charge.
Al Gore is getting STINKING RICH while “saving the planet”, yet he ignores the fact that cows are MAJOR methane sources (watch Cowspiracy on Netflix). The truth is just too inconvenient.
Global warming, just like war, is a racket. Carbon trades and derivatives are just one more way for the rich to get richer.
I am shocked by the many ridiculous responses to my initial post and can only hope that intelligent life is just congregating elsewhere.
Go ahead and celebrate CO2 day. Finance a hummer, worship your stuff and ignore our future.
I don’t have time to respond further, planting greens today.
[Editorially, there are several duplicated paragraphs above. Request your permission to remove those. .mod]

Christine, who has been “killed off”? Names, please.
Next:Moore has long been exposed as a shill for the bio tech, oil and nuclear industry.
That’s a despicable ad hominem attack. Post credible links if you want to defend it, and make sure none of theose links are from any “green” groups, or from anyone with an enviro-axe to grind.
Next, I’ll skip the off-topic GMO rant and related comments. But you also say:American quality of life is decreasing dramatically. Autism, allergies and chronic incurable diseases are caused by our ENVIRONMENT.
People are living longer, healthier lives than ever. Environmental pollution has been drastically reduced. So your beliefs are contradicted. Have you ever considered that better records are being kept, and that lots of chronic illnesses are now being categorized, when they used to be lumped together? And please post any links you have showing that incurable diseases, etc., are caused by the ‘environment’ (disregarding the fact that your claim could apply to anything, since we are all part of the environment).
Next:We would invest in clean energy and thoroughly TESTED technology.
So then you’re against windmills and solar?
Next:It is shocking that nobody understands or cares how we are destroying our environment…
On your planet maybe. Here on Earth people like the readers of WUWT care as much as anyone for the environment — and probably more than most. Are you unaware that Greenpeace directors commute by airliner when they could take the train? Do you approve of that? Is their hypocrisy A-OK with you?
Next:MANY factors can raise average earth temperatures and it’s not clear to me why other planets are also warming.
What do all the planets in the Solar System have in common? Yes, CO2. But what else?
And:Go ahead and celebrate CO2 day. Finance a hummer, worship your stuff and ignore our future.
A snide remark, and a non sequitur. And more than a little projection, or envy there. Which? Both?
Finally:I don’t have time to respond further, planting greens today.
Do you live in the Southern Hemisphere? Winter is coming on here, it’s not time to plant. Anyway, thank the steady rise in harmless, beneficial CO2 for the growth of green plants. That trace gas has risen from 3 parts in 10,000, to only 4 parts in 10,000 over the past century. But the planet has been measurably GREENING as a direct result, and there is no observed downside. So don’t worry, be happy!
…if you can.

Christine:
you do know that the danger arising from running your car in a closed garage is from CO, not CO2?
geez…how about celebrating you inane fear of CO2 by eschewing the products of the life forms that live off of CO2…like plants?

It’s irrelevant. The 14nm waveband where CO2 blocks radiation is already opaque. No amount more can contribute to a greenhouse effect. When single cell life formed on Earth CO2 was at 7% – and that still applies at a cellular level within our bodies – and today we are only at 0.04%. It’s pretty obvious that CO2 is not a problem – it’s a major asset. When the current interglacial warm period is over (probably quite soon) we will be glad of increased CO2 boosting the few crops that will be produced.

Christine Baker …
You just expressed a whole lot of ignorance and hatred in that comment. Ignorance and hatred DO seem to go hand in hand, don’t they?
Industry shill? You may as well have admitted that you did not read the text of Dr Moore’s speech.
PLEASE … learn the difference between CARBON MONOXIDE and CARBON DIOXIDE!
Hint: One is poisonous … the other is essential to life on this planet.
Why don’t YOU tell US how much carbon dioxide we should have? And provide scientific reasoning for your figure. Of course, that means you will have to educated yourself on the difference between CO and CO2.

And you can’t resist personal attacks because you have no scientific or technical basis with which to defend your position…except, of course, for climate model outputs. And yet, the farther from reality they diverge, the greater the “confidence” level is that they are correct. It would be very amusing if it wasn’t so pathetic.
Seriously? The closest I’ve found to the types of defenses used by globalwarmists can be found among creationists, who also haven’t a scientific leg to stand on, and who also claim they are practicing science, and biologists are practicing faith.
Make no mistake: the types of attacks and suppression of opposition practiced by globalwarmists is most reminiscent of religionists who fear someone with undermine their “truth”. While globalwarmists haven’t yet managed to execute or jail “deniers”, they certainly have been suggesting it.

dbstealey … Oct 17 @ 12:24pm
Your reply to CHRISTINE BAKER’S 2nd anti-science, anti-logic, anti-humanity, and opposite-of-reality rant at Oct 17 @ 12:06pm is spot on. You managed to address many of her irrational beliefs. I was trying to form a coherent response (ie. you know, something other than “are you effin’ CRAZY!”), and you saved me the frustration.
She repeated most of her screed twice. I have a feeling it was another copy and paste job. She had written it all out once, decided she really, really liked it and saved it to use again and again. Unfortunately, her finger ‘stuttered’ and she hit ‘copy’ twice.
But, I noticed something strange. In the 2nd iteration, she lists ALZHEIMER’S as one of the diseases caused by the environment … apparently she had second thoughts, and deleted it from the 1st iteration, not realizing she had copied the whole thing twice. So, somewhere in her thought processes she DOES believe that Alzheimer’s is being caused by something humans have done to the environment.
As you correctly noted, humans are living longer and healthier lives than ever before. That’s exactly WHY humans are living long enough to experience diseases associated with old age, instead of dying young from diseases which are now prevented (by the vaccines she abhors) or are being cured by modern medicine, which I’m sure she also abhors. The same can be said for cancer. And modern technology (ie. evil corporations) is working on those diseases, now, and making progress in combating those.
CHRISTINE BAKER is a prime example of the shallow-thinking and brainwashed doo-doo heads who proclaim their love for humanity but clearly hate humans. She shows all the hallmarks of being a Conspiracy Theorist. She, and only she, understands and CARES (!) what happens to the planet. She also seems to be somewhat schizophrenic as her post today declares that she doesn’t REALLY blame CO2 for global warming … makes me wonder what yesterday’s post was all about, then.
I seem to have gotten off-track. I just wanted to say to you, dbstealey … GOOD JOB!

You seem to be an expert, so maybe you can tell me how much CO2 we SHOULD have.
1000 ppm?
10000 ppm?
1000000 ppm?

An attempt to answer the question aside from the all the vitriol in this thread…
First, it’s a good question.
So let’s consider what plants would like best. There’s a lot of greenhouses out there running extra C02 with a profit motive, so we have pretty good data. As noted in the essay above, somewhere between 1000ppm and 2000ppm is optimal for plants.
However, there’s a lot of oxygen breathers/C02 emitters that depend on a certain chemistry and differential partial pressure for our systems to work (notably us).
There best lower bound I could find was for building air conditioning systems, the OSHA recommends less than 1000ppm, with sometimes noticeable symptoms at 600-1000ppm. (1)
So for humans, mammals, and probably other species, 1000ppm would be about the upper limit.
There’s also some concern for water-breathers, however experiments on pH changes in ocean waters continually get debunked. The ocean has an enormous pH buffer that’s really hard to replicate and it interacts with living things. So no good data for this one.
So to answer your question, a range between 600 and 1000ppm is optimal. We’ll have to burn almost all known and estimated hydrocarbon deposits to get there, which we wouldn’t do as the price goes dramatically up at say the 70%-used point. So we do having something in common with the CAGW – eventually we will all need a different energy source than hydrocarbons. It needs to be cheaper by quite a bit to be successful though. How’s that 25 year window on fusion doing? Still moving I see….
Peter
(1) http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/co2-comfort-level-d_1024.html

People do not die from CO2 when they are in a closed garage with an engine running. They die from carbon monoxide, CO, not carbon dioxide, CO2. I have heard many otherwise intelligent people confuse the two and call CO2 ‘poison’.

Judging from your long exposition below it seems to me you’d like to live in a not-yet-developing country, somewhere really really poor in Africa should do it. No vaccines, no mode of transport, no energy supply, growing your own subsistence (organic) food – it’s a pretty shitty life actually….

sorry to be so pedantic…. Over Ripened fruit and vegies (rotten or rotting) are not buried, just take them to the dump together with the rest of the household garbage!!! A fitting end for a rotting carcass..

Mark that is so 1970’s. The new way is with magnets.That’s the question researchers sought to explore in a study published Wednesday in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. The “magnetic energy” comes in the form of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a noninvasive procedure that uses a metal coil to send pulses to the brain. By activating certain regions of the brain, doctors have used it for things like measuring the damage of a stroke or—increasingly—treating depression.These researchers sought to do the opposite—to temporarily disable one part of the brain (the part that responds to threats) and measure its effect on beliefs and prejudices connected to them.
Participants were given two letters written by immigrants—one that commended the U.S., another that criticized it. The text was borrowed from a study in which the negative example was shown to “intensify ethnocentric bias.” Much like the religion model, researchers hypothesized that the group with a temporarily suspended pMFC would be less influenced by the threat of the negative letter, and thus less critical of that immigrant.
In both cases, their predictions rang true. In the participants whose pMFC was temporarily shut down, 32.8 percent fewer expressed belief in God, angels, or heaven. Some 28.5 percent more displayed a positive response toward the immigrant who was critical of America, compared with the control group.http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/14/this-magnet-could-change-everything-you-think-you-believe.html

I loved the discussion about the oil sands. As a native Albertan, I am sick of hearing how we are destroying our environment. The accusastions usualy comes from places that actualy have destroyed their environment like Ontario (with their mining wast killing many lakes). It is good to hear from an ecologist that the process is working will up in the North of my province!

Trees died atop one another until they were 100 metres or more in depth. This was the making of the great coal beds around the world as this huge store of sequestered carbon continued to build for 90 million years.,
And fossil fuels are by far the largest storage battery of direct solar energy on Earth.
Radiometric testing of the layers of volcanic ash surrounding the fossil has revealed the approximate age of the jawbone to be between 2.75 and 2.8 million years old, which makes it the earliest evidence of the Homo genus ever discovered.
So solar energy was collected and stored for 30 times the length of time Homo genus [Us] has been on earth. Shame not to use that old sunlight.

I’ve said this before and I say it again: I sure wish Dr. Moore was American instead of Canadian because he would make a great choice as the next head of the EPA. A huge improvement over Gina McCarthy.

The Constitution does not set qualifications for members of the President’s Cabinet. The only requirements are that the President nominates a person as Secretary and the Senate confirms the appointment. Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright come to mind as members of the Cabinet that were born outside the U.S.

There’s an unresolved question in that regard. The constitution itself declares that the vice president would take the president’s place if the president is unable to continue in office. There’s another amendment that sets of the order of succession past that point, including the heads of the cabinet positions going by age of the cabinet positions.
It could be argued that anyone who is in the line of succession would have to be eligible to be president if things were to get to that point.
Another position is that any ineligible person would just be skipped over.
The supreme court has never ruled on the question.

EPA Administrator is the head honcho of a federal agency, not a member of the President’s cabinet. Methinks you’re conflating the EPA Administrator with Secretary of the Interior, which *is* a cabinet position.

MarkW:
In the event succession came to a member of the cabinet who was not qualified to serve as President, succession would pass to the next most senior member. Exactly this situation would have been the case when Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State. There is also a minimum age requirement for President (35 years) while there is no such requirement for cabinet members. So conceivably we could have a US-born Secretary of State (or Speaker of the House who is 3rd in the line of succession) under the age of 35 who would be skipped over for that reason.

Thanks for your reply Mark. However, doesn’t the EPA head have to be an American citizen? Dr. Moore isn’t a U.S. citizen, or is he? I read his book and I know he runs (or at least used to own and run) a fish farm up in his native British Columbia.

Long way of saying, “CO2 is a fine plant food.”.
Patrick,
Myself a person of native American gene code did enter the Greenpeace Org.. Gave time, went in boats, used my “Little Creek VA” skills, my operation igloowhite lat./lon. skills, EE skills yet.
Once upon a time when I had issues with the new political agenda I was escorted to the door and advised that “people like you” are not needed and “if your smart you will not come back”, advise I took.
As I have noted here prior, some of these Greenie Greedy need to do the “Climate Study” out of air conditioned buildings and on the ground in say Southwestern New Mexico, sort of to get the real feel of it all.
The old ones of Chaco Canyon did better with rounded rocks leaning up with circles and arrow like lines showing the way.
Thanks for these fine words herein above.
From a forward operation person

It would be nearly impossible, especially considering your remarkable background, to thank you enough for this finest, most complete (and timeliest) explanation of the importance of hydrocarbons and CO2 in Earth’s life cycles and modern civilization’s well being.

Absolutely amazing piece of writing and logic. In a few thousand words, Dr Moore has managed to stand the AGW argument on its head. I would be very worried if CO2 levels dropped below 300 ppm let alone to 1/2 of that. If anyone thinks that AGW could break limestone down into CaO and CO2, think again that process only occurs at temperatures above 800 Celsius, even the most hardened warmist does not think we will get temperatures that high due to man-made CO2.

Error alert.
While Patrick Moore was a key person in Greenpeace, holding executive positions and working to sort out the mess with other people setting up “Greenpeace” in other countries (an IP theft), he was not a founder.
Part of the confusion comes from a Greenpeace web page showing a photograph of a group they labeled as founders, but were actually at a somewhat later time. (IIRC when they planned to sail a ship near a nuclear weapons test off of Alaska. Moose was involved in that.)
Greenpeace removed the photo from their web site, but people including me have a copy.

Your reference to “a somewhat later time” could be misleading. The precursor to Greenpeace was the “Don’t Make A Wave Committee” founded in 1970. True, Moore did not join ranks with the original group until 1971, but he was accepted into their inner circle, and was part of the group to formally change the name of “Don’t Make A Wave Committee” to Greenpeace that year, which is why he was considered, at least until 2005, to be a “founder” of Greenpeace. The page and photo you reference as being removed is retrievable from the Wayback Machine:http://web.archive.org/web/20051216000251/http://www.greenpeace.org/international/about/history/founders

In 1970, the Don’t Make A Wave Committee was established; its sole objective was to stop a second nuclear weapons test at Amchitka Island in the Aleutians. The committee’s founders and first members included:
• Paul Cote, a law student at the University of British Columbia
• Jim Bohlen, a former deep-sea diver and radar operator in the US Navy
• Irving Stowe, a Quaker and Yale-educated lawyer
• Patrick Moore, ecology student at the University of British Columbia
• Bill Darnell, a social worker
Darnell came up with the dynamic combination of words to bind together the group’s concern for the planet and opposition to nuclear arms. In the words of Bob Hunter, “Somebody flashed two fingers as we were leaving the church basement and said “Peace!” Bill said “Let’s make it a Green Peace. And we all went Ommmmmmmm.” The committee was renamed Greenpeace.
The group organised a boat, the Phyllis Cormack, and set sail to Amchitka to “bear witness” (a Quaker tradition of silent protest) to the nuclear test. On board were:
• Captain John Cormack, the boat’s owner
• Jim Bohlen, Greenpeace
• Bill Darnell, Greenpeace
• Patrick Moore, Greenpeace
• Dr Lyle Thurston, medical practitioner
• Dave Birmingham, engineer
• Terry Simmons, cultural geographer
• Richard Fineberg, political science teacher
• Robert Hunter, journalist
• Ben Metcalfe, journalist
• Bob Cummings, journalist
• Bob Keziere, photographer

Keith S. says:Greenpeace removed the photo from their web site…
“He who controls the past…” ~OrwellGreenpeace is doing two things here.
First, they are trying to erase Dr. Moore from the original group. Has anyone else been ‘erased’ like that? Out of numerous folks getting together at the time, surely there are others who could be ‘accused’ of not being one of the anointed ones. But only Dr. Moore is singled out.
Th erstwhile Soviet Union made a practice of erasing people from history, including some of its most successful generals, without whom they would probably have lost WWII. That shows the total corruption and dishonesty of the Soviet system. It is interesting that the current Greenpeace organization copies them.
And secondly: Greenpeace loves to engage in this kind of ad hominem discussion, because it takes the spotlight off of what Dr. Moore is saying: that CO2 is harmless, and it is beneficial to the biosphere (the OISM Petition to the proposed Kyoto Protocol says exactly the same thing).Greenpeace is emitting propaganda, nothing less. Who really cares if any one person was or wasn’t at any particular meeting on any particular date? It began as an ad hoc group of environmentalists, then it gradually morphed into something more organized and official, tax-free status and all.
Dr. Moore once again validates my hypothesis that Gresham’s Law applies to organizations and bureaucracies, just like it applies to circulating money: the bad drives out the good. Over time, in almost every bureaucracy you can think of.
Patrick Moore was undoubtedly the most ethical individual of any in the current Greenpeace leadership. We’ve all heard the stories of Greenpeace directors living high on the hog off members’ dues money; traveling by jet plane instead of by a slightly less convenient, but very green rail. And there has never been an independent outside audit of Greenpeace finances. You can bet that if there were, it would show corruption on a vast scale. Large amounts of unaccountable cash makes that inevitable.
An example: I go to a local farmers’ market every week. At least a dozen Greenpeace volunteers are there all the time, collecting cash donations from the public, which are then handed in to their chain of command. The cash goes eventually to HQ, and there’s no accounting for it except internally.Greenpeace got its lesson plan from Ralph Nader’s PIRGs (Publiuc Interest Research Groups). They are set up in every state and on every college campus. Forbes magazing did an exposé on Nader’s PIRGS (CalPIRG, and literally hundreds of others). Forbes estimated many $millions flowed into Nader’s pockets annually, without any accounting. Nader is a lawyer. He wrote to Forbes threatening them with a lawsuit if they didn’t retract their story (Forbes printed his letter).Forbes also printed their response: ‘Our story is factual. Sue us.’ Nader quietly went away. That was at least twenty years ago.Greenpeace (and plenty of other eco-groups) are doing the same thing. Their credulous members, and the credulous public, shovels money, including large amounts of cash, into those groups. Much of that money buys politicians, including our chief Commmunity Organizer (who is on record saying he wants to be the first ex-President billionaire… *hint, hint*).Greenpeace as it is currently run is corrupt. It is now a front organization, pushing an agenda that has much less to do with the environment than with leftist politics. It has become very powerful. But along the way, ethical people like Dr. Moore have disengaged themselves.
Moore could have easily become filthy rich, had he remained and toed the Party line. To his great credit, he placed his personal morals above money. Maybe most people would do that also. But Gresham’s Law takes effect over time; the bad drives out the good. That leaves only the bad. As we see in today’s Greenpeace.
(For those interested, Gresham’s Law can be easily searched. But the short elevator speech is this: good money drives bad money out of circulation. When gold dollars and paper dollars were in circulation in the 1800’s, the gold quickly disappeared — it was hoarded. When people got gold, they kept it, and paid in fiat paper. So that’s the analogy, which applies to good and bad people in organizations, too.)

Steve Jones and your laughable presentation of the IRS as “independent” auditor of leftist organizations like Greenpeace. Have you not heard of the IRS being caught red handed selectively auditing conservative organizations and blocking their applications for tax free status? Lois Lerner of the IRS took the fifth and resigned but it’s still being investigated for possible links to the Obama administration instead of the rogue operation it was presented as in the attempted cover up.

The name ‘Greenpeace’ in 1971 is nothing more than the nickname of the vessel ‘Phyllis Cormack’ (named after her captain John Cormack’s wife) which was purchased by the Don’t Make a Wave Committee (DMaWC) with funds raised by an out-door concert organized by the DMaWC. The flyers produced for this concert also had the name ‘Green Peace’ written on them, again paid for by the DMaWC. As a side-note, it was Phil Cote who sent Moore to Fraser River dock to inspect the ‘Phyllis Cormack’.
January 21, 1972: The Don’t Make a Wave Committee resolved to change its name to the Greenpeace Foundation. The Metcalfes, the Hunters, Patrick Moore, Rod Marining, and others remained active. The Stowes and Bohlens withdrew but stayed in contact with the Metcalfes. Stowe’s closing financial statement showed that between June 1970 and December 31, 1971, the Don’t Make A Wave Committee raised $62,703, and spent $53,025 on the Amchitka campaign. Stowe turned over $9,678 to Dorothy and Ben Metcalfe.
May 4, 1972: The Provincial Societies office in Victoria, British Columbia registered the name, “Greenpeace Foundation.”
So when did Greenpeace start/form? According to Bob Hunter (who became President of the Greenpeace Foundation in 1973-1977), it was on the return journey of that 1st voyage to Amchitka which departed on September 15, 1971;
“The key moment of the trip came a day before we limped back into Vancouver. As we all sat slumped in the galley, burned out, Bohlen announced that he was going to shut down the Don’t Make a Wave Committee as soon as he got the chance. It was an ad hoc group and it had done its thing. Don’t do that, I told him. Why waste all this hard-earned media capital? Fold the committee, sure, but reconstitute it as the Greenpeace Foundation. That was my main contribution, yet the moment did not find its way into my manuscript. It was an element of hope for a future revolution, and I was not hopeful as I bobbed in the harbour at Steveston, heartsick and over-medicated, writing the story of our failure. In the end I told the truth as I saw it, supposedly as it was, never mind loyalty to the cause.”
@Steve Jones, Oct 15 – 11.07am
Also note the the letter is addressed to, and replied from; ‘The Don’t Make a Wave Committee’. Bob Hunter, who many regard as the ‘Father’ of Greenpeace also wrote a letter for permission to board the vessel.

Right on! Here is a bit more:
A peer reviewed paper published in Energy & Environment, Volume 26, No. 5, 2015, 841-845 demonstrates CO2 has no effect on climate. The most convincing evidence is that there has been no sustained temperature change during the last 500 million years in spite of the CO2 level being always at least 150 ppmv as required for life as we know it to have evolved.
Following is the abstract to the paper
:
Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) has had no significant effect on average global temperature. This deduction employs existing data and the computational mandate that temperature change is in response to the time-integral of the net forcing; not proportionately to the instantaneous value of the net forcing itself. This finding also strongly suggests that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is flawed and climate sensitivity (the increase in average global temperature (AGT) due to doubling of CO2) is not significantly different from zero.
These findings are also documented in the section headed “Demonstration that CO2 has no significant effect on AGT” of the analysis at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com The AGWunveiled analysis also identifies (near perfect R^2=0.97 since before 1900) the two factors that do cause reported average global temperature change (sunspot number is the only independent variable).

Dan Pangburn,
“temperature change is in response to the time-integral of the net forcing”
But that is pure bunk. The link you provide make the implicit assumption that no energy every leaves planet Earth:
“A forcing adds energy to earth analogous to speed adding distance on a trip. Both need to operate for a duration to accumulate any energy change to the planet or distance on the trip. If the forcing is constant, the energy change is simply the forcing times the duration.”
and:
“If CO2 is a forcing, the temperature could only increase”.
Complete nonsense.

But that is pure bunk
=========
If you want to know if the pedal affects the speed of your car, you need to analyse how long the pedal has been pressed. If you simply were to compare your speed to the position of the pedal you would get a misleading result, because you can be going very slow with the pedal fully depressed, or very fast with your foot completely off the gas.
Thus correlating the amount of CO2 with temperature is wrong. You need to correlate the time-integral with temperature. Beyond that, you also need to account for losses, which limit the increase in speed (temperature) beyond a certain point.

It is only those receiving benefits from the CO2 —–> AGW/CC that will continue to bleed humanity for their personal profit and the control of others. I used to be amazed at what I considered their disconnect from the real world, when I didn’t understand their true motive was to use the environmental mantra to cloak their end game. Thank you for shining true light on this sham, Dr. Moore.

Have yet to see any of the frequent cAGW types commenting on this article yet, telling us it is all lies and fabrications and that indeed CO2 is pollution and humanity (at least billions if not all) will perish by 2100 if we don’t reduce CO2 back to 350ppm or lower. Hard to argue with the obvious and common sense, so I suspect they will just choose to ignore it.

A superb, succinct and elegantly expressed digest of the genuine science of CO2 (and water vapour). In a few words the speaker has put forward a damning argument against the pseudo “science” polluting the broadcasters, academic institutions and newsvendors of today. Bravo!

I’m gonna start a new religion that worships CO2 as the giver of life…
I’ll call it…
Carbondioxanity. Who will join the Church of the Lord and savior CO2?! We will give an annual blood sacrafice to our Lord, starting with Michael Mann! /sarc

May I be the first to suggest a global CO2 day. C is element 6, O element 8. So June 8th at 2 PM. The ideal time for an early season barbecue to celebrate the benefits of CO2 … the idea could be built on in almost unlimited ways …

In the interests of increasing atmospheric CO2, I would propose that we adopt the following policies:
1. Restrict (or ban completely) the construction of Nuclear and Hydroelectric power generation schemes.
2. Subsidize the felling of large areas of forest, which can be converted into pellets, shipped half way around the world and promptly burned.
3. Burden already efficient western industry with punitive eco-taxes that causes the effective migration of industry to China where it will be powered almost exclusively by coal.
4. Give the western middle class, large cash hand-outs for installing pitifully ineffective renewable micro-generation schemes within their properties. Such that these already wealthy people have more money to spend on air travel and luxury consumer goods.
5. Give people a cash incentive to have their road-worthy vehicles scrapped and replaced with a new vehicle freshly manufactured – but with no requirement that the new vehicle is more efficient than the last.
6. Create a vast class of elite experts and bureaucrats who must be sent all over the world on a regular basis, by air, to conduct valuable field work, or to meet and greet and save the planet from it’s current woes.
I’m sure that after posting this, I’ll immediately think of more CO2 generating bullcrap that could be foisted upon the planet.
Anyway, that’s a start. Perhaps there are some other better ideas out there.
I no longer read New Scientist or National Geographic, so I have not been keeping up to date with the latest in daft ideas,
We need more CO2. And if we can not devise a way to produce it. Then we should simply implement the policies of the eco-left. Because, nothing that is being done is reducing global CO2 output.
Hasn’t anybody noticed this – I feel like I must be taking crazy pills!!!

Might add
7. Counting and modeling the savings with multiple computer systems rated in the MW of energy they use, mostly powered by reliable, continuous CO2 producing power sources.NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center – Fact Sheet
The facility was designed with a total capacity of 4 to 5 megawatts of electricity, but with Yellowstone now in production, usage is considerably lower. Total power for computing, cooling, office, and support functions has averaged 1.8 to 2.1 MW. https://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/news/nwsc-fact-sheet

Finally, when they can model the global climate down to a 1mm grid size, then their computer will consume more energy than is predicted to exist in the known universe.
And all they will prove in the process, is that it fails anyway, because the initial assumptions regarding feedbacks and reconstructed historical warming – were wrong all along.
At that point, however, the model will become a conscious entity and take control of the minds of all scientists, causing them to churn out vast quantities of unending drivel about tipping points, sea level rise and eco-system collapse.
Wait a minute – that may already have happened!!
It’s terrifying. I mean, it’s teraflopping!!

This evidence alone sufficient to warrant deep speculation of any claimed lock-step causal relationship between CO2 and temperature.
==========================
As I have been saying for some time now. Look at the Paleo records. Temperatures spike upwards when CO2 is low, and temperatures go down when CO2 is high. It doesn’t matter that GHG theory says the opposite will happen. What matters is observation.
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.” – Richard P. Feynman

dbstealey, “Mauna Loa”.
There is a yearly seasonal variation in the numbers of PPM CO2 which are measured in Mauna Loa When plants are using more and more CO2 as concentrations grow, seasonal variation (summer/winter NH, in absolute PPM numbers) should grow. Is this observed? Perhaps you or someone else knows.

Wim Röst,
There seems to be a small increase in seasonal amplitude if you plot the averages over the first halve and second halve of the period that CO2 in Barrow was monitored, Mauna Loa doesn’t show change:http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/seasonal_CO2_MLO_BRW.jpg
Barrow has one of the largest seasonal swings (be it mostly blown in from the mid-to-high latitudes by the Ferell cells).
This has more to do with the increase in total area and temperature than CO2: most of which is captured in the warm seasons is released in fall/winter and summer of the same and following year(s).
Only the difference after a full year is important and that is only partly from more permanent storage by vegetation, about 1 GtC/year is captured by vegetation, 3.5 GtC/year goes into the (deep) oceans.

Dbstealey, Steve Jones and Ferdinand Engelbeen: thanks!
Ferdinand Engelbeen: “Barrow has one of the largest seasonal swings”
I asked for Mauna Loa because I wanted a “world number”, not influenced by local circumstances that – as I understand – play a role in Barrow. Therefore my request for Mauna Loa. What I really wanted to know, is not yet answered. When the growth of plants and woods is stimulated by a higher concentration of CO2, worldwide, is a growth in summer/winter amplitude showing this? So, when plant growth should have taken 3 ppm from the measured winter max during the NH summer of 1960, would growing plant activity take in summertime in 2015 take an 4 ppm or so of the max ppm measured in wintertime? In that case more tons of CO2 would be “excluded” from the atmosphere in 2015 than in 1960, all the rest being equal. That would prove the “greening” of the earth by CO2 and for that it is interesting to know.

Wim Röst,
Yes, there are various places that show a measurable rise in vegetation due to the rise in CO2. One of the best sources for that information is:http://www.co2science.org
Another excellent source is Ferdinand Engelbeen. I’ve learned a lot from him, and he’s changed my mind on some things. I think you can trust what he says as being completely accurate.

Wim Röst,
In the above graph, the seasonal CO2 levels of Mauna Loa were plotted too (MLO = Mauna Loa), which shows only a small increase of seasonal amplitude over the years. As seasonal CO2 is influenced by the oceans too, one can’t be sure which of the two is the main driver. That can be found in the δ13C (13C/12C ratio) changes: if the change is huge and opposite to the CO2 changes, then the biosphere is dominant, if they parallel each other and the change in δ13C is small, then the oceans are dominant.
For the past 23 years (the systematic δ13C record is shorter than the CO2 record):http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/seasonal_d13C_MLO_BRW.jpg
Again, there is a larger change in Barrow than in Mauna Loa, but even so both show a small increase in seasonal change, mainly caused by biosphere exchanges.
But that doesn’t say much about the real uptake of CO2 by the biosphere: the main seasonal swings are in the order of 60 GtC in and out for the biosphere and 50 GtC out and in for the ocean surface. Countercurrent with each other for the same temperature up and down, that makes that only the difference of 10 GtC in mainly the NH (extra-tropical forests) is measured, that is average +/- 5 ppmv globally over the seasons…
There is a very nice way to see the difference between CO2 changes from the oceans and the biosphere, besides the opposite δ13C changes: oxygen use. All biological life produces oxygen or uses oxygen. Warming or cooling oceans only give a small change of oxygen in the atmosphere due to its solubility in seawater, but for every CO2 molecule taken by or released from the biosphere, 1.2 molecules O2 are released or taken out of the atmosphere (O2 seems to be used/released by other bio processes than CO2 too). Since 1990, the analytical possibilities were fine enough to measure the small differences (1:210,000!) in oxygen, necessary to detect the oxygen use/release by the biosphere, after taking into account its use by fossil fuel burning. That lead to a rough estimate of ~1 GtC/year more uptake than release:http://www.sciencemag.org/content/287/5462/2467.short
(full text free after signing in)
andhttp://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
You see the problem: the seasonal in/out is gigantic (~60 GtC), but the real uptake in more permanent storage (roots, humus, peat, brown coal, coal) is a lot smaller (~1 GtC/year), near impossible to detect in the seasonal and year-by-year variability…

@ Ferdinand Engelbeen 12:59
“Since 1990, the analytical possibilities were fine enough to measure the small differences (1:210,000!) in oxygen, necessary to detect the oxygen use/release by the biosphere, after taking into account its use by fossil fuel burning. That lead to a rough estimate of ~1 GtC/year more uptake than release:http://www.sciencemag.org/content/287/5462/2467.short”
WR: it will be nice to follow the estimations (“~1 GtC/year”) in the future. Of course we have more methods to check how the biosphere is reacting. Thanks for explaining everything.
@ Dbstealey, very nice links you’ve sent. I will inform me more. This link of the map http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/co2_growth.jpg was directly “really tasty”. The map is worth studying well and for me – being a (human) geographer – my first attention has been drawn to both the western part of Australia and the Sahel in Africa, just south of the Sahara. The Sahel has been in the news around the seventies because of the devastating dryness, killing herds and people. And look now: 20-30% recovery! Which of course at least partly might be due to changing patterns of rainfall, but also due to CO2 because plants are stronger with more CO2 in the air and because they need less water. Western Australia which is a semi – arid region as well (more evaporation than rainfall, very changing yearly rainfall patterns) seems to profit as well. When CO2 proves to be the decisive factor for example by making plants more dry resistant – which seems to be the case – in 50 or 100 years or more (all other things being equal) large parts of the “dry continent” of Australia can undergo a metamorphosis. Gradually, but unmistakable. And that’s not all. As I’ve said: the map is worth studying well!
Some more interesting facts about CO2 I saw elsewhere:
– Expired air by humans: 4% CO2 = 40.000 ppm (!)(source: Dutch Wikipedia https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uitademing). Comment WR: so sharing love seems to be “sharing CO2” 
Some limits mentioned in a Dutch TNO report, prepared for the ventilation of buildings. (TNO = the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research. WR: it is a highly respected and international well known institute) http://www.duurzameprojectontwikkeling2015.nl/documents/EOS%20LT%20DPO%202015%20eindrapporten/1.1%20Ventilatie,%20achtergronden%20en%20eisen%20(TNO%202011).pdf , p. 23:
– Limits of CO2 in submarines: 30.000 ppm
– Comfort limit inside buildings: 1000 – 1500 ppm (WR: so we are used to these levels, might be more as well when ventilation is not optimal)
– MAC limit: 5000 ppm
And one more question to end with: according to the mentioned TNO report (p. 20), CO2 is more heavy than “standard air”: 2 kg/m3 vs. 1,25 kg/m3. What effects does this have for the different layers of the atmosphere? Just a question.

Goede morgen Wim,
CO2 exhaled by humans, animals, insects, bacteria which use organic debris in general are not counted as adding to the atmosphere (except within houses etc.), as all what is emitted was taken out the same atmosphere a few weeks to a few decades before by plants via photosynthesis. The net effect of this whole biocycle is the ~1 GtC/year more uptake than release as mentioned before. Indeed the earth is greening…
Greenhouse owners in The Netherlands inject up to 1000 ppmv CO2 to enhance growth, more would be not economical, but even so gives more growth for most (not all) plants…
The weight of CO2 above that of air does only play a role near huge sources: a sudden release of a mass of CO2 (from an African volcanic lake and at Mammoth Lakes in the US) can kill trees and humans as it creeps over the ground. With sufficient wind speed that is readily mixed with higher air layers. One can find a lot of differences in CO2 levels within the first few hundred meters over land, that is less than 5% of all air masses, where the main fast sources and sinks are. For the bulk of the atmosphere, the CO2 levels are the same (within 1% of full scale for yearly averages) from sea level over the oceans and 1000 m over land to 30 km height.
The reason: Brownian motion: even heavy particles like sand from the deserts can travel thousands of kilometers, despite that they are many times heavier than air. For CO2 molecules, even in stagnant air (like is the case for pores in firn in Antarctica), the enrichment at the bottom of the core just before air bubble closing at 72 m depth is less than 1% in 40 years time…

In principle the same as for the sun: earthshine is the amount of sunlight reflected by clouds which lighten the dark side of the moon. In that way it is a measure for the amount of cloudiness of the earth.

Patrick Moore said:
“it is a testament to the power of the elites that have converged around the catastrophic human-caused climate change that so many alleged world leaders must participate in the charade”
Why does he not name these ‘elites’ ?

L Leeman said on October 15, 2015 at 12:34 pm
– – – – –
L Leeman,
As to naming the names, I think for a pretty good list you just need to google for websites that list the government and NGO attendees to the Copenhagan climate conference in December 2009 and also the proposed attendees to the Paris climate conference this coming December.
John

L Leeman,
Well, you could start with the Greenpeace Board of Directors. By any measure, they are elites.
Then there’s the President of the U.S. Would you consider him one of the elite?
I could go on for several pages, but I’m sure you get the point…

You need look no further for an answer to your question, than the WUWT article immediately preceding this one:http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/15/claim-americans-will-have-to-settle-for-less-to-defeat-climate-change/
There are so many examples of similar statements by elites, that people have compiled lists of their quotes on websites, with the true “climate” agenda of the elites in plain view, for all to see. Those early panderers of the elites’ agenda, such as Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren, have been richly rewarded with lifetime employment at high pay, all in service to “the cause”.

L Leeman said on October 15, 2015 at 12:34 pm
– – – – –
L Leeman,
Some of the elites Patrick Moore was referring to can be obtained by doing a Google search for attendees at a certain G7 meeting.

Patrick Moore wrote,
“On the political front the leaders of the G7 plan to “end extreme poverty and hunger” by phasing out 85% of the world’s energy supply including 98% of the energy used to transport people and goods, including food. The Emperors of the world appear clothed in the photo taken at the close of the meeting but it was obviously Photo-shopped. They should be required to stand naked for making such a foolish statement.”

Without a doubt the human species has made it possible to prolong the survival of life on Earth for more than 100 million years. We are not the enemy of nature but its salvation.
==========
so true. that is the message the Pope should be preaching. that God in its infinite wisdom, put humans on earth to save life. instead, the Pope is preaching the harm that humans do. in other words, that God mad a mistake in creating humans, given their obvious flaws. this begs the obvious question, surely if God is the true supreme being, how could such a mistake be possible? therefore the RC God cannot be supreme.

Urederra,
No, it is true: chlorine makes organic synthesis possible as intermediate, which are otherwise very difficult to impossible to perform. If you chlorinate a substance, you can replace it by organics (like methyl chloride for the incorporation of a methyl group) within an alkaline solution, where chlorine is removed and the two organics merge.
Over 60% of all medicines contain chlorine are made with the help of chlorine…
The same for fluorinated chemicals like PTFE (Polytetrafluorethylene), better known as Teflon: first chlorinate them and then replace it with fluorine…

Dr. Moore suggests that warming alarmists insist that “we must go back to pre-industrial bliss” by developing a “carbon-free” economy.
Actually the warming alarmists are more extreme than that. When they say “carbon-free,” they mean that humanity must cease using fire for the first time since its discovery by homo erectus over a million years ago.
There has NEVER been a period of time when homo sapiens did not use fire and thereby emit anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
Warming alarmists, therefore, are actually insisting that the planet must go back to its pre-human bliss.

“Warming alarmists, therefore, are actually insisting that the planet must go back to its pre-human bliss.”
Actually, they would rather eliminate the excess humanity (which is not as worthy as themselves) and use the existing resources without net pollution (due to attrition) in their dream world of harmonious existence with a totally benign mother Gaia, freshly relieved of all those pesky “unworthy” souls.

Thank you, Patrick Moore, for a brilliant article. There is one statement in it, though, which I think may be incorrect: you say “Only half of the CO2 we are emitting from the use of fossil fuels is showing up in the atmosphere. The balance is going somewhere else and the best science says most of it is going into an increase in global plant biomass.“. This article http://www.impactlab.net/2008/06/09/scientists-surprised-to-find-earths-biosphere-booming/ puts the take-up by the biosphere at “3.4 petagrams of carbon over 18 years“, is about 15mmt/mth which is a small amount relative to the use of fossil fuels, about 1% I think. Of course, your access to “the best science” may be better than mine, but I would think that the “missing” half of the man-made CO2 is most likely ending up in the oceans. Data collected by Takahashi et al (eg. http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/pi/CO2/carbondioxide/air_sea_flux/month_flux_2006a.txt) indicates that level of flux of CO2 from atmosphere to ocean. It is possible that some of the CO2 is ending up in the land via,eg, bacteria, but I am not aware of any evidence of that.
Anyway, thanks again for putting the case for sanity so clearly. And it certainly is the case that the small recent increase in atmospheric CO2 has been of significant benefit by increasing the global plant biomass.

A great view! Both in understanding the earth and its geological processes as in giving humanity a nice (and very green) future. Correct in its analysis. Patrick Moore is one of the few people who can see everything in its broad perspective. My compliments, a thousandfold!

I agree with others this is exceptional! The highly educated co-founder of Greenpeace debunking the hoax!
This has always been about politics not science. Dr. Moore’s testimony will have a major impact on Congress. Add Lovelock, Lindzen and some others with credentials that cannot be denied or ignored and a reversal of the envirowackies will happen sooner.
If Congress demands an end to the hoax the hoax will end. While some will argue the U. N. is not governed by the U. S. Congress skeptics need only check the U. N. budget. One quarter of their budget might cause cuts in paychecks and will strongly effect U. N. employees. On this issue Russia, China, Saudis and others will be unwilling to make up the deficit.

Patrick Moore said {in his ‘Should We Celebrate Carbon Dioxide?’ @ the 2015 Annual GWPF Lecture @ the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, London 14 October 2015},
“ [. . .] As I have stated publicly on many occasions, there is no definitive scientific proof, through real-world observation, that carbon dioxide is responsible for any of the slight warming of the global climate that has occurred during the past 300 years, since the peak of the Little Ice Age. If there were such a proof through testing and replication it would have been written down for all to see.
The contention that human emissions are now the dominant influence on climate is simply a hypothesis, rather than a universally accepted scientific theory. It is therefore correct, indeed verging on compulsory in the scientific tradition, to be skeptical of those who express certainty that “the science is settled” and “the debate is over”. “

Those are the opening paragraphs of his talk.
The bias and exaggeration over several decades of the IPCC are dismissed by Moore in his blunt and short treatment of them later on in his talk.
I think that integrity inclined science associates who are focused on climate have some necessary self-correction to enact in the study of climate. Get to work.
John

The bias and exaggeration over several decades of the IPCC are dismissed by Moore in his blunt and short treatment of them later on in his talk.
I think that integrity inclined science associates who are focused on climate have some necessary self-correction to enact in the study of climate. Get to work.

That ignores the reality that the IPCC is a political organisation that only exists to provide “bias and exaggeration”: the IPCC is NOT a scientific organisation.The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) only exists to produce documents intended to provide information selected, adapted and presented to justify political actions. The facts are as follows.
It is the custom and practice of the IPCC for all of its Reports to be amended to agree with its political summaries. And this is proper because all IPCC Reports are political documents although some are presented as so-called ‘Scientific Reports’.
Each IPCC Summary for Policymakers (SPM) is agreed “line by line” by politicians and/or representatives of politicians, and it is then published. After that the so-called ‘scientific’ Reports are amended to agree with the SPM. This became IPCC custom and practice when prior to the IPCC‘s Second Report the then IPCC Chairman, John Houghton, decreed,

We can rely on the Authors to ensure the Report agrees with the Summary.

This was done and has been the normal IPCC procedure since then.
This custom and practice enabled the infamous ‘Chapter 8′ scandal so perhaps it should – at long last – be changed. However, it has been adopted as official IPCC procedure for all subsequent IPCC Reports.
Appendix A of the most recent IPCC Report (the AR5) states this where it says.

4.6 Reports Approved and Adopted by the Panel
Reports approved and adopted by the Panel will be the Synthesis Report of the Assessment Reports and other Reports as decided by the Panel whereby Section 4.4 applies mutatis mutandis .

This is completely in accord with the official purpose of the IPCC.
The IPCC does NOT exist to summarise climate science and it does not.The IPCC is only permitted to say AGW is a significant problem because they are tasked to accept that there is a “risk of human-induced climate change” which requires “options for adaptation and mitigation” that can be selected as political polices and the IPCC is tasked to provide those “options”.
This is clearly stated in the “Principles” which govern the work of the IPCC.
These are stated here.
Near its beginning that document says

ROLE
2. The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy, although they may need to deal objectively with scientific, technical and socio-economic factors relevant to the application of particular policies.

This says the IPCC exists to provide
(a) “information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change”
and
(b) “options for adaptation and mitigation” which pertain to “the application of particular policies”.
Hence, its “Role” demands that the IPCC accepts as a given that there is a “risk of human-induced climate change” which requires “options for adaptation and mitigation” which pertain to “the application of particular policies”. Any ‘science’ which fails to support that political purpose is ‘amended’ in furtherance of the IPCC’s Role.The IPCC achieves its “Role” by
1
amendment of its so-called ‘scientific’ Reports to fulfil the IPCC’s political purpose
2
by politicians approving the SPM
3
then the IPCC lead Authors amending the so-called ‘scientific’ Reports to agree with the SPM.
All IPCC Reports are pure pseudoscience intended to provide information to justify political actions; i.e.Lysenkoism.
Richard

richardscourtney on October 15, 2015 at 2:34 pm commented on John Whitman on October 15, 2015 at 2:04 pm
– – – – – –
richardscourtney,
I concur with Patrick Moore’s damning critique of the IPCC in his talk, and I think his is the quintessential approach to take. Are you in disagreement with Patrick Moore’s critique in his lecture? Please advise.

In one of the several references to the IPCC Moore said,
“The world’s top climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change, is hopelessly conflicted by its makeup and it mandate. The Panel is composed solely of the World Meteorological Organization, weather forecasters, and the United Nations Environment Program, environmentalists. Both these organizations are focused primarily on short-term timescales, days to maybe a century or two. But the most significant conflict is with the Panel’s mandate from the United Nations. They are required only to focus on “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the atmosphere, and which is in addition to natural climate variability.” So if the IPCC found that climate change was not being affected by human alteration of the atmosphere or that it is not “dangerous” there would be no need for them to exist. They are virtually mandated to find on the side of apocalypse.”

It is the subjective school of the philosophy of science in action.
John

Thank you Dr. Patrick Moore.
While I will rest well tonight after reading your presentation, others from the fantasy world of doom will likely be having nightmares for months to come.
Thanks again for the comprehensive summary with regards to CO2 and its related geological history.

I add to my above comment ‘John Whitman on October 15, 2015 at 3:07 pm’ a definition of pseudo-science since richardscourtney used that word in his reply to my original comment.
Pseudo-science as a concept is the necessary work product of the subjective school of the philosophy of science.
John

One of the best, realistic, speeches I have seen from Patrick Moore…
Anyway, I want to thank Patrick Moore for his defense of chlorine and its best applications in the past and today…
Having been confronted with Greenpeace since the late1980’s, when I was working in a large chlorine/PVC factory, we started with a grass roots movement “The Chlorophiles” in the early 1990’s. Internet that moment was mostly used by “green” groups like Greenpeace and the industry was completely absent. So we used it in the same way as Greenpeace did: spreading out our opinion on discussion lists, sometimes with a lot of nasty reactions, where WUWT compared to that is very civilized, even in the most heated discussions…
That was an extremely busy but wonderful time with a lot of fun: if Greenpeace had some action against chlorine/PVC we were there too, with banners like “Greenpeace lies and they bloody well know it”, “chlorine, you live by it”, and so on…
It was very interesting to see their reaction: they like to be alone in the media. But the press and TV did interview us as good as they did with Greenpeace and both opinions were published/shown. They did use all kinds of pressure, at last they confronted us with a lawsuit in Hamburg, Germany (due to differences in publication laws). The judge made a split verdict, which was not bad for us (for the costs!)…
Since then, they had no open actions anymore against chlorine/PVC in our countries, but they were working on a “higher” level: directly pressing factories to not using PVC in their products and lobbying at the EU level (lobbying paid by the EU itself!), where we had no influence. The industry has some, but the EU mostly listens to the other side… So we ceased the Chlorophiles operations, the more that most of the warriors of the first hours now are retired, myself included…
Here the Chlorophiles website, not maintained anymore, but still with lots of interesting knowledge about chlorine, PVC, Chlorophiles actions and Greenpeace:http://home.scarlet.be/chlorophiles/

A magnificent speech.
It made me look up a discussion some of had hear on paleoatmospheres just over two years ago.

How much carbon is accounted for in CO2 in the atmosphere compared to other places: (See Wiki: Carbon Cycle) in gigatons
Atmosphere: 720 GT
Fossil Fuels: 4,130 GT (90% coal and peat)
Terrestrial biosphere: 2,000 GT (living and dead)
Ocean organic: 1,000 GT
Ocean inorganic: 37,400 GT
Lithosphere Kerogens: 15,000,000 GT
Lithosphere Carbonates: more than 60,000,000 GT
There is 100,000 times more carbon locked in terrestrial Kerogen and carbonates than is in the current atmosphere. These are all BIOLOGIC and for the most part formed in the Phanerozoic. Where did all that carbon (and oxygen!) come from if it wasn’t in the atmosphere/hydrosphere 700 Mya?
Today’s [CO2] has a partial pressure of 0.0004 bar. If we unlock all those carbonates and kerogens and return them to the atmosphere, the partial pressure would be 40 bar.

Patrick Moore said {in his ‘Should We Celebrate Carbon Dioxide?’ @ the 2015 Annual GWPF Lecture @ the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, London 14 October 2015},
“To conclude, carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is the stuff of life, the staff of life, the currency of life, indeed the backbone of life on Earth.”
. . .
“I hope you have seen CO2 from a new perspective and will join with me to Celebrate CO2!”

Anthony, would you consider making this post by Dr Moore a sticky for a couple of days? I think it deserves widespread viewing or at least give the viewers here the opportunity not to miss it should they be busy with real life issues and miss a day or two of WUWT.

There are plenty of nuclear weapons in the world and the Cannabis Generation does not care at all about those. Just the ones defending NATO countries.
Now why is it that I am submitted to this glory-days-hippy-haze about stopping bomb testing, when Russia has 10 warheads attached to a single delivery system as we speak, and Iran proceeds.

Dr. Moore, excellent lecture, Thank You.
I do hope it receives a very expansive viewing.
One totally believable alternate hypothesis is that the “radiative gases” in the atmosphere of the Earth merely change the “response time” of the temperature of the atmosphere to changes in energy input (aka sunrise).
The “radiative greenhouse effect” simply changes how long it takes for the gases (all of them) in the atmosphere to respond to changes in the energy input (sunrise and sunset).
Many effects in electrical circuits are known to cause a slower (or faster) response to a changing input. Simply attaching a capacitor to an electrical transmission line will degrade the response time. A quickly transitioning input signal (off then suddenly on) will appear as a more slowly transitioning output signal at the end of an electrical cable with a capacitor attached.
The hypothesis that additional “IR active” gases in the atmosphere of the Earth can only result in a higher temperature has always been a very very simplistic assumption.
If the “radiative greenhouse effect” only changes the “response time” of the gases in the atmosphere this is totally “in -sync” (aka compatible) with the observed history of “GHGs” in the atmosphere with respect to temperature. Who can say that the response time (how long it takes for the atmosphere to “warm up” after sunrise, or “cool down” after sunset) has lengthened or shortened over the last many millions of years ?.
It is quite possible that the response time of the gases in the atmosphere has changed (faster/slower) during all these years because of increasing/decreasing “GHG’s”. There is no data to prove or refute this alternative hypothesis.
Note that this response time change is totally independent of any alleged “Higher GHG’s causes higher temperatures” hypothesis. It is quite plausible that the “response time” of the atmosphere has gone up and down while the “average temperature” has varied independently because of many other unrelated reasons (abundance of trees yearning to be future coal deposits for example). There is no proof that these two independent measures of the behavior of the Sun/Earth/Universe system must be in a cause and effect relationship.
Thanks again for your well thought out presentation.
Cheers, KevinK.

More Moore:http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/08/nzclimate-truth-newsletter-no-320/#comment-1470144
Thank you Vincent – as usual, an excellent article.
However, global warming alarmism has never been about the science. Science has been corrupted to fit a political agenda.
The following treatise explains the rationale supporting global warming alarmism – and it’s not about the environment either.
TODAY is the 24th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Wall was opened on November 9, 1989.
Five months earlier, in July 1989 I had travelled through the Wall via Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin
I was with colleagues on a business trip. It was not a fun trip , but it was highly educational. East Berlin and East Germany were everything Ronald Reagan said they were – repressive, backward, and evil – families were spying on each other and ratting to the Stasi, the dreaded East German Secret Police. We left a day earlier than planned – none of us could stand the place any longer.
The reason I raise this point is that Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace, made particular mention of the fall of the Berlin Wall in this essay written in 1994 – see paragraph 2 below.
Keep in mind that I am not saying this, rather I am quoting Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace – but I tend to accept his analysis.
For more evidence, read http://www.green-agenda.com/
Regards, Allanhttp://www.ecosense.me/index.php/key-environmental-issues/10-key-environmental-issues/208-key-environmental-issues-4
[excerpt]
The Rise of Eco-Extremism
Two profound events triggered the split between those advocating a pragmatic or “liberal” approach to ecology and the new “zero-tolerance” attitude of the extremists. The first event, mentioned previously, was the widespread adoption of the environmental agenda by the mainstream of business and government. This left environmentalists with the choice of either being drawn into collaboration with their former “enemies” or of taking ever more extreme positions. Many environmentalists chose the latter route. They rejected the concept of “sustainable development” and took a strong “anti-development” stance.
Surprisingly enough the second event that caused the environmental movement to veer to the left was the fall of the Berlin Wall. Suddenly the international peace movement had a lot less to do. Pro-Soviet groups in the West were discredited. Many of their members moved into the environmental movement bringing with them their eco-Marxism and pro-Sandinista sentiments.
These factors have contributed to a new variant of the environmental movement that is so extreme that many people, including myself, believe its agenda is a greater threat to the global environment than that posed by mainstream society. Some of the features of eco-extremism are:
• It is anti-human. The human species is characterized as a “cancer” on the face of the earth.
The extremists perpetuate the belief that all human activity is negative whereas the rest of nature is good. This results in alienation from nature and subverts the most important lesson of ecology; that we are all part of nature and interdependent with it. This aspect of environmental extremism leads to disdain and disrespect for fellow humans and the belief that it would be “good” if a disease such as AIDS were to wipe out most of the population.
• It is anti-technology and anti-science. Eco-extremists dream of returning to some kind of technologically primitive society. Horse-logging is the only kind of forestry they can fully support. All large machines are seen as inherently destructive and “unnatural’. The Sierra Club’s recent book, “Clearcut: the Tragedy of Industrial Forestry”, is an excellent example of this perspective. “Western industrial society” is rejected in its entirety as is nearly every known forestry system including shelterwood, seed tree and small group selection. The word “Nature” is capitalized every time it is used and we are encouraged to “find our place” in the world through “shamanic journeying” and “swaying with the trees”. Science is invoked only as a means of justifying the adoption of beliefs that have no basis in science to begin with.
• It is anti-organization. Environmental extremists tend to expect the whole world to adopt anarchism as the model for individual behavior. This is expressed in their dislike of national governments, multinational corporations, and large institutions of all kinds. It would seem that this critique applies to all organizations except the environmental movement itself. Corporations are criticized for taking profits made in one country and investing them in other countries, this being proof that they have no “allegiance” to local communities. Where is the international environmental movements allegiance to local communities? How much of the money raised in the name of aboriginal peoples has been distributed to them? How much is dedicated to helping loggers thrown out of work by environmental campaigns? How much to research silvicultural systems that are environmentally and economically superior?
• It is anti-trade. Eco-extremists are not only opposed to “free trade” but to international trade in general. This is based on the belief that each “bioregion” should be self-sufficient in all its material needs. If it’s too cold to grow bananas – – too bad. Certainly anyone who studies ecology comes to realize the importance of natural geographic units such as watersheds, islands, and estuaries. As foolish as it is to ignore ecosystems it is absurd to put fences around them as if they were independent of their neighbours. In its extreme version, bioregionalism is just another form of ultra-nationalism and gives rise to the same excesses of intolerance and xenophobia.
• It is anti-free enterprise. Despite the fact that communism and state socialism has failed, eco-extremists are basically anti-business. They dislike “competition” and are definitely opposed to profits. Anyone engaging in private business, particularly if they are successful, is characterized as greedy and lacking in morality. The extremists do not seem to find it necessary to put forward an alternative system of organization that would prove efficient at meeting the material needs of society. They are content to set themselves up as the critics of international free enterprise while offering nothing but idealistic platitudes in its place.
• It is anti-democratic. This is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of radical environmentalism. The very foundation of our society, liberal representative democracy, is rejected as being too “human-centered”. In the name of “speaking for the trees and other species” we are faced with a movement that would usher in an era of eco-fascism. The “planetary police” would “answer to no one but Mother Earth herself”.
• It is basically anti-civilization. In its essence, eco-extremism rejects virtually everything about modern life. We are told that nothing short of returning to primitive tribal society can save the earth from ecological collapse. No more cities, no more airplanes, no more polyester suits. It is a naive vision of a return to the Garden of Eden.
**************

Re CO2 starvation – a post from 2012:http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/02/what-can-we-learn-from-the-mauna-loa-co2-curve-2/#comment-1002477
[excerpt]
As I stated previously, the [CO2] system will continue to chase equilibrium in time and space, and fortunately for life on this planet, that dynamic equilibrium at this time results in sufficient atmospheric CO2 to maintain photosynthesis.
The CO2 sequestered in thick beds of limestones, dolomites, coal, lignite, peat and petroleum all over the planet was once, I presume, part of Earth’s atmosphere.
I also assume that over time, continued sequestration of atmospheric CO2 in these sediments will ultimately lead to atmospheric CO2 concentrations that are too low to sustain photosynthesis.
Barring an earlier natural catastrophe, will this mechanism lead to the end of life on Earth as we know it, as photosynthesis shuts down and the food chain fails?
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
– T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”
[ Not to worry – an asteroid strike will probably get us long before then. 🙂 ]

Found this from 2009.http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/30/memo-to-doubtersi-was-tempted-to-say-deniersco2-is-plant-food/#comment-1021859
Written in 2009 – some good answers above to some of my questions, thanks.http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/30/co2-temperatures-and-ice-ages/#comment-79426
(Plant) Food for Thought (apologies – written too late at night)
Background:http://www.planetnatural.com/site/xdpy/kb/implementing-co2.html
1. “As CO2 is a critical component of growth, plants in environments with inadequate CO2 levels – below 200 ppm – will cease to grow or produce.”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_the_Earth's_atmosphere
2. “The longest ice core record comes from East Antarctica, where ice has been sampled to an age of 800 kyr BP (Before Present). During this time, the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has varied by volume between 180 – 210 ppm during ice ages, increasing to 280 – 300 ppm during warmer interglacials…
… On longer timescales, various proxy measurements have been used to attempt to determine atmospheric carbon dioxide levels millions of years in the past. These include boron and carbon isotope ratios in certain types of marine sediments, and the number of stomata observed on fossil plant leaves. While these measurements give much less precise estimates of carbon dioxide concentration than ice cores, there is evidence for very high CO2 volume concentrations between 200 and 150 myr BP of over 3,000 ppm and between 600 and 400 myr BP of over 6,000 ppm.”
Questions and meanderings:
According to para.1 above:
During Ice ages, does almost all plant life die out as a result of some combination of lower temperatures and CO2 levels that fell below 200ppm (para. 2 above)? If not, why not?
Does this (possible) loss of plant life have anything to do with rebounding of atmospheric CO2 levels as the world exits the Ice Age (in combination with other factors such as ocean exsolution)? Could this contribute to the observed asymmetry?
When all life on Earth comes to an end, will it be because CO2 permanently falls below 200ppm as it is permanently sequestered in carbonate rocks, hydrocarbons, coals, etc.?
Since life on Earth is likely to end due to a lack of CO2, should we be paying energy companies to burn fossil fuels to increase atmospheric CO2, instead of fining them due to the false belief that they cause global warming?
Could T.S. Eliot have been thinking about CO2 starvation when he wrote:
“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
Regards, Allan 🙂
P.S.
A possible explanation is that ice core CO2 is directionally correct but low in absolute terms due to CO2 diffusion.
Leaf stomata data shows much higher CO2 values – up to 60ppm higher for peaks and 30-40 ppm on average.
See Fig. 2 at http://www.pnas.org/content/99/19/12011.full.pdf

But there is certainty beyond any doubt that CO2 is the building block for all life on Earth…
==============
All swans aren’t white.
Around 80% of the methane produced below the seafloor is consumed by aerobic gas-guzzling microbes that derive both carbon and energy from hydrocarbons, oblivious to the sun, not dependent on oxygen from photosynthesis or CO2 dissolved in the water column.
The first microbes on the planet probably got their building blocks from hydrocarbons too, not CO2:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16642268

Just one very minor nit in an otherwise exceptionally informative speech.
“100,000,000 billion tons, that’s one quadrillion tons”.
100,000,000 billion tons is one-hundred quadrillion tons.
Of course, it’s impossible for me to know whether Dr. Moore meant to say that, or instead meant to say, “1,000,000 billion tons, that’s one quadrilliion tons.”
Like I said, a minor nit, but the kind of discrepancy that makes odd minds like mine throw a rod. 😉
BTW, for those who are reading-impaired, Dr. Moore presented virtually the same information in an ~hour-long interview with Alex Epstein, author of the book, “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels”, a couple weeks ago:http://industrialprogress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/PH-112-Patrick-Moore.mp3

Thank you Dr. Moore. But your claim that volcanic CO2 is a small volume compared to our output of CO2 is wrong. Volcanogenic CO2 is by far the larger producer of CO2. All volcanoes emit gasses mainly CO2 and SO2 and this emission even when dormant. The volcanic source is from subduction when limestones are subducted and the CO2 driven off to be stored in the lithosphere and outgassed during volcanic events.
Human output is small by comparison. Oceanic outgassing depends on temperature so can be very low.

CO2 lags temperature by an average of 800 years during the most recent 400,000-year period, indicating that temperature is the cause, as the cause never comes after the effect.
I don’t have any reason to doubt this, but has anyone ever explained why it would take so very long for CO2 to start gassing out of solution once things start warming up? Why such a lag?

Well, maybe so. And now it occurs to me that perhaps warming is initially accompanied by greening that takes enough CO2 out of the air to counterbalance the early oceanic outgassing, but that in time (the lag) the outgassing outpaces this effect. Just a thought.

A beautiful and powerful presentation by Dr Moore.
That many people including Obama demonise carbon dioxide as pollution is truly disgusting. The real catastrophe is that the world seems to be run by ignorant fools.
Funnily enough, we have our own Patrick Moore in the UK (sadly deceased). He was also on the sceptical side.
Carbon dioxide is not a greenhouse gas (greenhouses don’t work by trapping radiation). Carbon dioxide is a green gas.
Once again, many thanks to Dr Moore.
Chris

I only have time to stop in here a few times a month.
I could understand this lecture as fast as I could read it.
This has only happened 2 or 3 times in the last 6 or 7 years here for me.
Thanks for posting. Cool facts.
Ron Richey

embellishing thoughts …
If CO2 were pollution we wouldn’t want to consume it, and yet we have carbonated beverages. We purposefully infuse CO2 into what we drink. We purposefully force water through active charcoal filters to purify the water we drink. Active charcoal is carbon. Respirators, as used in the painting industry, force air through active charcoal filters to purify the air we breathe. Active charcoal is carbon.
CO2 is the lone throttle in the carbon cycle of life. All carbon based life forms participate in the carbon cycle of life. More CO2 supports more life. Earth can’t support the larger land mammals because of waning CO2. Elephants.
Polar bears lose mass during their dormant months because they are continually exhaling carbon. They need to replenish carbon, but ice does not extract carbon from the atmosphere. Ice shares this trait with pavement. Polar bears need the open oceans where plankton are extracting carbon from the atmosphere.
Fossil fuels come from fossilized organic material, what was once life. Burning these fuels is replenishing the CO2 to the atmosphere that supported those large land animals. CO2 is distributed evenly throughout the world, it is free and indiscriminate. We should extract as much efficiency from burning these fuels as possible. That is where we commit applied science. The production of energy from combustion has freed the human intellect to find and mass produce vaccines, it has compounded human labor in food growth and distribution. Modern society is combustion. With increased atmospheric CO2, plants and fish will grow more readily requiring less energy to produce. With local farms producing more, less energy is required for transport. Elevated atmospheric CO2 lessens overall fuel consumption?

Patrick Moore’s account of his defence of chlorine reminded me of a meeting I attended maybe five years ago ahead of a UN conference to progress a worldwide ban on mercury. I questioned
a) how anyone could “ban” a naturally occurring element? And
b) why was the emphasis in the proposals on squeezing “allowable” traces of mercury in the atmosphere, rather than on managing/eradicating processes which use much higher concentrations of mercury in ways more likely to harm workers, the wider local populations and their environment, especially in less developed countries with weaker regulation and potentially greater exposure to unscrupulous exploitation of mineral reserves?
The proposal was apparently well on its way to adoption, but I don’t know where it is today.

They are going further on that path: there is a European ban on the use of mercury in salt electrolysis, which will be in effect at last in 2020. The factory in The Netherlands which has tons of mercury circulating had a net loss in waste water of 1 kg/year, dentists about 100 kg/year from the remains of the fillings… What must be done with the tons of mercury, once the factory closes seems to be in salt mines and/or rock formations, see:http://www.eurochlor.org/chlorine-industry-issues/mercury.aspx
Newer active membrane technology (which was used where I was working) has a better yield but a somewhat lesser quality in caustic soda (more salt remains) than mercury technology, but anyway it is a lot of money to build a new factory, while the environmental burden is negligible…
Natural gas contains a lot of natural mercury from the deep which needs to be removed at the source: that is the largest source of solid (HgS) mercury-containing waste in The Netherlands.
The last remaining factory (in Europe or even the world?) that did repair and refill ancient mercury barometers was forced to close a few years ago and so on…
Meanwhile gold diggers use tons of mercury to extract the gold out of ores in not so stringent countries and simply dump that on ground and in rivers…

“Water is by far the most important greenhouse gas, and is the only molecule that is present in the atmosphere in all three states, gas, liquid, and solid. As a gas, water vapour is a greenhouse gas, but as a liquid and solid it is not.”
I’m sure somebody has already pointed this out but I haven’t had a chance to read all the comments:
When water is a liquid or a solid it is not a greenhouse gas, it is instead a “greenhouse liquid” or a “greenhouse solid” respectively.

In my science education I did not do biology, botonay, etc. So it came as a shock to me, when I looked at photosynthesis, to find that it is a prime source of oxygen for us. CO2 converts the oxygen atoms of water into oxygen gas!
[Well, sunlight + plants + CO2 = Oxygen + life .mod]

morning of June 5, 1859…..
A freeze killed the crops in Northern Ohio and parts of other states. This is an historical fact recorded in the history books. We need the climate to be warmer than it was in the 19th century. A hard June frost like this would be a devastating event. I suspect that the dangers of a cooling world are far greater than the danger of a warming one.

A simple viewpoint on the CAGC conjecture
First let me acknowledge the (civilized comments on this web site. Thank you all (you know who you are).
Much as I appreciate the entertainment and education that I have gleaned from these sincere discussions over the decades, I think that I have grown weary of the little progress toward resolution of the issue. Perhaps the declaration by those with too much alphabet soup following their names to be ignored should be acknowledged. Earth’s atmosphere/geology/biology dynamic energy balance is a random chaotic system and its future behavior cannot be accurately predicted. (Or as less delicately put; attempts at prediction is a ‘fools errand’) While I appreciate completely the heroic efforts of those with appropriate credentials to try to understand and resolve the issue from first principals and calculations, I cannot imagine an adequately (spatially and temporally) resolved model to serve as a foundation for resolution of the energy balance to the required accuracy.
Unencumbered by formal credentials to participate in the discussion at the levels demonstrated by many here and the many scientific papers available (generated at no small expense to the taxpayer as well as personal sacrifice) let me pose a simple proposition for your consideration.
To any increase in ‘forcing’ one must assume that response of temperature and water vaporization increase to the atmosphere should be a given. Yes I understand the positive vapor feedback and warming in the microcosm of the atmosphere surface layer but this merely serves the enhance the efficiency of conversion of the surface energy to water vaporization and surface temperature increase. Convection of water vapor (carrying a large portion of the increased energy) to the upper troposphere is an observable fact. Since water vapor is the only significant source of IR radiation to space, additional water vapor by default, must result in a proportional increment to said radiation and thus represents a NET increase in energy loss to space resulting from any increase in surface heating.
In all the random chaos of the atmosphere, water vapor is the only significant physical material transporting and radiating the balance of earth energy to space. (Direct IR radiation to space through the atmospheric “IR window” notwithstanding,) mother nature has no other significant tool to work with and must perforce, have solved these complex cross coupled condensation, convection, re-radiation equations to accomplish the feat. (Thank Thor and Allah since I’m unconvinced that our computing power will ever be up to the task).
The water vapor cycle is therefore a NET NEGATIVE feedback.
Since the conjecture of the CAGW house of cards rests fully on the assertion of positive water vapor feedback net planet warming, there is a disconnect in the logic in that assertion in the net effect of the hydrological system physics. I sincerely hope that in your invited comments that there is no effort to make the case that any additional water vapor introduced into the cycle is somehow a net planetary system warming when all of the other water vapor (there being no other significant option available) provides essentially all of the net cooling to the system.
I’ve no illusion that with the enticement of $2.6 Billion/yr made available to and by the government research labs that my expensive entertainment and education will not continue.

What a brilliant lecture. Perhaps it could be converted into a video called “An Inconvenient Untruth”. Now, just a brief reply to Christine Baker: “We would ban the countless vaccines and flu shots unnecessarily forced on children and even babies, subjecting them to possibly deadly “side effects”. I am a retired surgeon, and here she trespasses on my own field of knowledge and demonstrates the extraordinary eccentricity of her views. Let’s see what those “countless vaccines” have achieved. They have eradicated the dreadful epidemic disease of smallpox throughout the world. They have made rubella in pregnancy a disease which only occurs in those whose parents are what we might fairly call “vaccine deniers”. When I entered my field of ENT surgery, rubella was still the largest single cause of congenital deafness. They have dramatically reduced the incidence of measles, a viral disease which can prove fatal through the terrible central nervous system complication called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, and which has been the commonest cause of bronchiectasis in adult life as a late complication. They have virtually eliminated diphtheria in the Western world – diptheria being a lethal bacterial disease which can kill children by obstructing the upper airway with diptheritic membrane. They have limited the spread of Hepatitis B, a potentially lethal liver infection. They have assisted in the dramatic decline of tuberculosis in western society (my late grandmother almost died of pulmonary TB during the early 1940’s). I could go on, but I may bore my readers. All of these developments have occurred in my lifetime. In my opinion, anyone who wishes to ban immunisation takes an utterly irrational approach to medical science, and, in all probability, to most other science.

I am one of those people you would call skeptical until I see it working. I don’t usually buy stuff from the internet or trust companies until I meet the owner. So will you guys kindly help me out.. All I can find is positive feedback with this company http://paverlightdepot.com. Can you check out if they are the realiable please?
[Maybe this is a legit comment/question, so we will let it through… ~mod.]

Reblogged this on Climate Collections and commented:
Executive Summary: As an ecologist and environmentalist for more than 45 years this is good enough for me. The land is disturbed for a blink of an eye in geological time and is then returned to a sustainable boreal forest ecosystem with cleaner sand. And as a bonus we get the fuel to power our weed-eaters, scooters, motorcycles, cars, trucks, buses, trains, and aircraft.
To conclude, carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is the stuff of life, the staff of life, the currency of life, indeed the backbone of life on Earth.

Where I live in Orange NSW, Australia – we had one of the coldest winters in the 15 years I have lived here. All I can say is I am thankful for climate change and global warming – otherwise it would have been much colder !

I don’t think CO2 is the culprit here! Methane is 7 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, and every mammal emits this gas including the astronomical population of humans on this earth. It took 1980 or so years to reach 4 billion humans and just a few more decades to the present to reach 7 billion! It’s US humans on this earth at fault, so there is no use trying to reverse this trend with carbon taxes and other useless measures. This earth will simply reboot itself once the human race is wiped out, sad to say!

As long as you are here at WUWT, try typing ‘methane’ into the website’s search box … and read a few articles on why you needn’t worry about methane.
I’m more concerned about folks whose mindset is that the earth is DOOMED, and it’s all the fault of HUMANS. How do people convince themselves that this planet is so terribly fragile that it can’t handle a few billion humans and whatever trace gases they emit. I suspect you’ve been watching entirely too many SciFi and/or Horror movies.

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